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towards their mother land.
This coldness is increased
by the many foreigners who are settled among them; for
Dutch, Germans, and
French, are here blended with
English, and have no special love for Old England.
Besides, some people are always discontented, and love change; and exceeding freedom and prosperity nurse an untamable spirit.
I have been told, not only by native
Americans, but by English emigrants, publicly, that, within thirty or fifty years, the
English colonies in
North America may constitute a separate state, entirely independent of
England.
But, as this whole country is towards the sea unguarded, and on the frontier is kept uneasy by the
French, these dangerous neighbors are the reason why the love of these colonies for their metropolis does not utterly decline.
The English government has therefore reason to regard the
French in
North America as the chief power that urges their colonies to submission.’
The
Swede heard but the truth, though that truth lay concealed from British statesmen.
Even during the war, the jealous spirit of resistance to tyranny was kindled into a fury at
Boston.
Sir Charles Knowles, the
British naval commander, whom
Smollett is
thought to have described justly as ‘an officer without resolution, and a man without veracity,’ having been deserted by some of his crew, while lying off Nan-
tasket, early one morning, sent his boats up to
Boston, and impressed seamen from vessels, mechanics and laborers from the wharves.
‘Such a surprise could not be borne here,’ wrote
Hutchinson, who was present, and he assigns, as the reason of impatience, that ‘the people had not been used to it.’
‘Men would not be
contented with fair promises from the governor;’ ‘the seizure and restraint of the commanders and other officers ’
