The Treaty of Aix-La-Chapelle: Company and Mahew

The words of young Mahew went forth from his pulpit in Boston, at that time, with the seeming unction and authority of the ancient prophets, "Thus saith the Lord"--when, with fervid eloquence, he denounced the unholy alliance of church and state for stamping out the freedom of Americans. It was then no secret that the English hierarchy were conspiring with the crown for the establishment of an episcopacy in America, and making the liturgy of the Church of England the state form of public worship. It was a part of the plan for enslaving the Americans. Whitefield had sounded the alarm-bell in New England, and Mahew was among the first to openly avow the public dissatisfaction. He vehemently reproved the "impious bargain between the sceptre and the surplice." "Resist the small beginnings of civil tyranny," he said, "lest it should swell to a torrent and deluge empires." "The divine right of kings, and non-resistance," he said in a sermon in 1750, "are as fabulous and chimerical as the most absurd reveries of ancient or modern visionaries.. If those who bear the title of civil rulers do not perform the duty of civil rulers--if they injure and oppress--they have not the least pretence to be honored or obeyed. If the common safety or utility would not be promoted by submission to the government, there is no motive for submission." And he declared that disobedience, under such circumstance, became "lawful and glorious." The sentiment of the colonists was responsive; and the temper manifested by the people then was the herald of that flame of feeling which, a quarter of a century later, kindled the old war for independence. It aroused the animosity of the crown and its creatures against the Americans, and history was repeated. Demosthenes said to the Thebans two thousand years before: "We are well aware of that inextinguishable hatred which kings and the slaves of kings have ever felt towards nations which have plumed themselves on being free."

A crisis was now at hand. The disputes between the French and English in America ripened into action.

The French were offended by the planting of Halifax, in Nova Scotia; and a partisan named La Corne, professing to act under the orders of Joncaire, chief captain in Canada, took possession of the isthmus that connects the peninsula with the main, with a large force of French and Indians. He summoned the Acadians to renounce their allegiance to the English and take refuge with the French; and that poor people were at their wits' and. He held a village (now Fort Lawrence), and compelled the inhabitants to take an oath of allegiance to France.

When Cornwallis heard of this he called upon Massachusetts to help in disloding the intruders. The Assembly replied: "By the constitution of this province we must first be convinced of the necessity of raising supplies." So they politely refused, and Cornwallis was compelled to rely upon the slender means at his command. With four hundred soldiers he appeared in transports before the town. The alarmed Jesuit priest set fire to the church, and compelled the bewildered inhabitants to lay their houses in ashes and flee across the river. The French were too strong for the English, and the latter withdrew. A second expedition, a few months later, was successful. Fort Beau Sejour, which the French had built opposite the desolated town, was captured, with loss of life. This was the first blood they had shed in war since the treaty at Aix-la-Chapelle. It was now August, 1750.

This event was followed by the capture of French vessels by an English man-of-war off Cape Sable. The French government, exasperated by these insults to their flag, broke off negotiations for a peaceful settlement of boundaries in America, and resolved to appeal to the arbitrament of the sword. At near the head of the valley of the Ohio was the theatre of the first passage at arms.

The Ohio Land Company took measures for defining and occupying their domain. Thomas Lee, Augustine and Lawrence Washington, and other leading Virginia members of the Company, ordered goods to be sent from London suitable for the Indian trade; and as no attempt at settlement could be safely made without some previous arrangement with the Indians, the Company petitioned the Virginia government to invite the savages to a treaty council. As a preliminary movement, the Company took measures to obtain information concerning the best lands beyond the mountains. English traders with the Indians had traversed the passes through them, and spoke of the beauty and fertility of the country beyond, but the Company wished more definite knowledge. In the autumn of 1750, Christopher Gist, from the borders of the Yadkin, was in Virginia. He was a bold and skillful woodsman, and acquainted with Indian life; and he was employed to cross the great hills and spy out the land. He was instructed to observe the best mountain passes; to explore the country as far down as the Falls of the Ohio (Louisville); examine the most useful streams and count their falls; search out the fertile level lands; ascertain the strength of the Indian tribes, and make as accurate a chart of the region as his observations would allow.