Page:History of the United States of America, Spencer, v1.djvu/209

] 1745, the savages in alliance with France, made frequent invasions of the English territories. Encouraged by success, the enemy became more daring, and small parties ventured within even the suburbs of Albany, and there laid in wait for prisoners. Distressed by these incursions, the Assembly, in 1746, determined to unite with the other colonies and the mother country in an expedition against Canada. They appropriated money to purchase provisions for the army, and offered liberal bounties to recruits. But the fleet from England did not arrive at the appointed time; the other colonies were dilatory in their preparations, and before they were completed the season for military operations had passed by. The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1748, put an end to the contest for a time, but only for a time. The grand struggle for mastery was soon to be made and decided.

The proprietaries of New Jersey, wearied out with struggling with the settlers, in the year 1702 ceded to the crown their rights of jurisdiction; whereupon Queen Anne joined New Jersey to New York, under the government of Lord Cornbury. They, too, as well as the New Yorkers, resisted the encroachments and fraudulent acts of the governor. In 1738, New Jersey obtained by petition, the privilege of having a governor of its own; and Lewis Morris was placed in the chair. The position of New Jersey gave it superior advantages in comparative exemption from the assaults and inroads of the Indians. We find, hence, that its progress was steadily forward, although its annals are marked by serious disputes on the subject of paper money, conveyances of land by Indians to certain claimants, the resistance of the squatters to the efforts made to oust them, etc. After Morris's death, in 1745, Belcher, in 1747, took charge of the difficult post of governor of New Jersey; but he was not able to manage matters much better than his predecessors. His course was conciliatory; and he favored the founding of the college at Princeton, which received a charter in 1748. The population of New Jersey at this date is computed to have been forty thousand.

Pennsylvania, too, was not without its share of trouble, though, on the whole, it continued to advance in prosperity. George Keith, a Scotch Quaker, gave rise to a kind of schism, by pressing the question of non-resistance to an extent quite beyond what the more reasonable Quakers ever were willing to go. His attack on negro slavery, as inconsistent with these principles, and the "Address" which he set forth, led to his being fined for insolence, and his being taken up by the non-Quakers as a sort of martyr. Penn was cleared from suspicion, and restored to the administration of his province in 1694; but the pressure of debt kept him in England, and he appointed Markham to act as his deputy. The Assembly having presented a remonstrance to Governor Markham, in 1696, complaining of the breach of their chartered privileges, a bill of settlement, prepared and passed by the Assembly,