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

[123] than was expressed. Though presents in unusual

chap. V.} 1754.

abundance had been provided, and a general invitation had been given, but one hundred and fifty warriors appeared. Half of the Onandagas had withdrawn, and joined the settlement formed at Oswegatchie under French auspices. Even Mohawks went to the delegates from Massachusetts to complain of fraudulent transfers of their soil,—that the ground on which they slept, and where burned the fires by which they sat, had never been sold, but had yet been surveyed and stolen from them in the night.¹ The lands on the Ohio they called their own; and as Connecticut was claiming a part of Pennsylvania, because by its charter its jurisdiction extended west to the Pacific, they advised the respective claimants to remain at peace.

The red men having held their last council, and the congress, by its president, having spoken to them farewell, the discussion of the federative compact was renewed, and the project of Franklin being accepted, he was deputed alone to make a draught of it. On the tenth day of July, he produced the finished plan of perpetual union, which was read paragraph by paragraph, and debated all day long.

The seat of the proposed federal government was to be Philadelphia, a central city, which it was thought could be reached even from New Hampshire or South Carolina in fifteen or twenty days. The constitution was a compromise between the prerogative and popular power. The king was to name and to support a governor-general, who should have a negative