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

[168] of not more than a thousand acres for any one person.

chap. VII.} 1754

From the settlement of this tract it was represented that great additional security would be derived against the encroachments of the French.¹ Thus Virginia seemed to have in charge the colonization of the west; and became the mother of states on the Ohio and the Tennessee.

But the ministry still doubting what active measures to propose, sought information² of Horatio Gates, a young and gallant officer just returned from Nova Scotia. He was ready to answer questions, but they knew not what to ask. On the advice of Hanbury, the quaker agent in England for the Ohio Company, they appointed Sharpe, of Maryland, their general. Newcastle would have taken Pitt's opinion. ‘Your Grace knows,’ he replied, ‘I have no capacity for these things.’³ Horace Walpole, the elder, advised energetic measures to regain the lost territory.⁴ Charles Townshend would have sent three thousand regulars with three hundred thousand pounds, to New England, to train its inhabitants in war, and, through them, to conquer Canada. After assuming the hero, and breathing nothing but war, the administration confessed its indecision; and in October, while England's foolish prime minister was sending pacific messages ‘to the French administration, particularly to Madame de Pompadour and the Duke de Mirepoix,’⁵ the direction and conduct of American affairs was left entirely to the Duke of Cumberland, then the captaingeneral of the British army.