George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 4, 15th edition.

[91] recommended to secure the dominion of Lake Ontario

chap. IV.} 1751.

by an armed sloop and by forts upon its shore. But, it was asked, how is the expense to be defrayed?

And the question did but invite from the governor of New York new proposals for ‘a general duty by act of parliament;¹ because it would be a most vain imagination to expect that all the colonies would severally agree to impose it.’

The receiver-general of New York, Archibald Kennedy, urged, through the press, ‘an annual meeting of commissioners from all the colonies at New York or Albany.’ ‘From upwards of forty years observation upon the conduct of provincial assemblies, and the little regard paid by them to instructions,’ he inferred, that ‘a British parliament must oblige them to contribute, or the whole would end in altercation and words.’ He advised an increase of the respective quotas, and the enlargement of the union, so as to comprise the Carolinas; and the whole system to be sanctioned and enforced by an act of the British legislature.²

‘A voluntary union,’ said a voice from Philadel-

1752.

phia, in March, 1752, in tones which I believe were Franklin's,³ ‘a voluntary union, entered into by the colonies themselves, would be preferable to one imposed by parliament; for it would be, perhaps, not much more difficult to procure, and more easy to alter and improve, as circumstances should require and experience direct. It would be a very strange thing, if Six Nations of ignorant savages should be ’