British traders were privy to his murder. No evidence exists of such complicity. There is no ground for supposing that on the part of the authorities there was any desire to be rid of him, for after the peace Pontiac had ceased to attract attention. If any trader was connected with his murder, the prompting motive must have been private resentment, for no public consideration suggested it.

Such was the somewhat ignominious end of the chief who for some months had stood forth in prominence before the continent, and held confined within the enclosure of the barrack-fence an armed British force; an attack which he abandoned by negotiation, and in which he was not forcibly repelled. His rare powers, his capacity for war, and his undoubted high qualities in many respects, exact mention of him as the foremost man of his race of his time. The close of such a life under such painful conditions must ever command sympathy. The feeling is increased by our want of knowledge of the cause of quarrel, and the uncertainty whether Pontiac fell in a hand to hand struggle, or was the victim of cowardly and treacherous assassination.

It may perhaps be considered that I have bestowed excessive attention on the history of this Indian war. It appeared to me, however, a duty so to act, for it has hitherto been considered as of no great importance. Those who follow the narrative I have endeavoured to give can arrive at no such conclusion. Only for the transfer of Louisiana to Spain the seeds of a future war with France had been sown, in which the struggle for the possession of the Ohio would have been renewed. One of the extraordinary features of the war is, that it should have taken place at a period when the fever of republicanism was being rapidly developed in New England, when impatience of imperial rule was rising to the surface, especially with the young lawyers struggling into notice, who accepted it as a dominant principle. New England, as a community, was not concerned in the war of the west, the garrison at Halifax making any hostile Indian demonstration in the northern part of the territory, that of the present state

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of Maine, improbable and even impossible. The struggle with the Indian on the Atlantic coast had long been terminated.

On the other hand, New York was directly interested in the events of the west. Many of the speculators of the province were engaged in the fur trade. Many were owners of land on the Mohawk, and the growing settlements upon that river were at the time seriously threatened by the tribes gathered around La Presentation, the modern Ogdensburg. The Albany politicians and operators were intent on obtaining possession of the best lands of the Six Nations, and by no means scrupulous as to means of doing so. It was only by the untiring effort and judgment of sir William Johnson that the Six Nations remained friendly to the British. Had they joined the western confederacy it would have been a most formidable alliance, and the narrative of the war as traced in these pages might have been of a different character.

The intervention of the home government by the proclamation of 1763, to prevent the spoliation of the Indian, remains a most noble monument of British national justice, and is acted upon to this day in Canada. I shall have to relate its effect in creating disaffection to British rule in the cities of New York and Albany. The calumny that British tyranny was exercised in the government of the provinces, repeated without investigation for the last century and a quarter, disappears on any candid examination of the fact. Feeble administrations, composed of politicians intent on the emolument of office, in the early years of George III. followed one the other, in rapid succession, to neglect the true interests of the empire. They violated the liberty of the subject at home, and mischievously legislated for the colonies abroad. The house of commons had become subservient to the views of the court, and the majority passed measures for the main reason that they were acceptable to the king. Every administration was made impotent for good. As Burke wrote: "The prerogative of the crown had been retrenched to admit of parliament becoming the oppressor of the people in extending the royal power." Reference to those unfortunate

days, in the hope of tracing a record of good government, is vain and futile. Faction was predominant. The prestige of the country was lessened abroad; at home the constitution was violated, and there was a fatal departure from the policy which, firmly observed towards the American provinces, would have created so strong a majority in favour of the maintenance of the connection with the mother country as to have been unassailable.

All this is true, and the pages of history which relate these events must ever remain a painful chapter in the record of that evil time. But the assertion that Great Britain desired to tyrannise over the colonies is unfounded and without justification.

The narrative of the years of Indian war, which I have related, establishes the desire of the mother country to aid the American provinces in every difficulty. No student of history can ever be insensible to this undeniable truth; no citizen of the present United States should ever cease gratefully to think of the fostering care with which, in this exacting emergency, American interests, pure and simple, were fostered, fought for and preserved. I have felt it accordingly to be right and proper to preserve the memory of these years, 1763-1765, so that no future misconception can arise with regard to the course followed by the mother country during this trying time.