Note 314 — Chapter II · (continued 2)

“I am here,” writes Pownall, September 6, 1757, “at the head of what is called a rich, flourishing, powerful, enterprising colony,—’t is all puff, ’t is all false; they are ruined and undone in their circumstances.” (Pownall’s Letter Book.) A brief State of the Services and Expences of the Province of the Massachusett’s Bay in the Common Cause, London, 1765, sets forth the charges upon the province during the wars since 1690. Cf. Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe, ii. 84; Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., xx. 53; Collections, vi. 44, 47. Walsh in his Appeal (p. 131) says that it was asserted in the House of Commons in 1778 that 10,000 of the seamen in the British navy in 1756 were of American birth. “From the year 1754 to 1762, there were raised by Massachusetts, 35,000 men; and for three years successively 7,000 men each year.... An army of seven thousand, compared with the population of Massachusetts in the middle of the last century, is considerably greater than an army of one million for France in the time of Napoleon.” Edw. Everett on “The Seven Years’ War the School of the Revolution,” in his Orations, i. p. 392.