was exhausted; that nothing was to be done but to keep things as they are.

To renounce the search for eternal truth passed for wisdom; the notion that there can be no cognition of the immutable and the divine was extolled as the perfection of enlightened culture, the highest end of intellectual striving. Men cherished no wish for anything beyond appearances and vain show. The prevailing philosophy in its arrogance was proud of its chains. It not only derided the infinite in man, but it jeered at the thought that there is an infinite with which man can commune. It scoffed at all knowledge that transcends the senses, and limited itself to the inferior lessons of experience; dethroning the beautiful for the agreeable, the right for the useful, the true for the seeming; knowing nothing of a universal moral government, referring everything to the self of the individual. Hume brought this system to the test, and, applying doubt to its lessons, laid bare its corruption. His searching skepticism was the bier on which the philosophy of materialism was laid out in state, where all the world might come and see that it really was no more. But, while he taught the world that it led to nothingness, he taught nothing in its stead. He might oppose the war with America, because it threatened to mortgage all the revenues of the land in England; but, ever welcome at the Bourbon palace and acceptable to George III., he had professed to prove that tyrants should not be deposed, that the euthanasia of the British constitution would be absolutism. Skepticism may strike worn-out institutions into ruins, but it cannot build up a commonwealth; there must be a new birth in philosophy, or all is lost in the world of reflection; in political life there can be no renovation but through that inborn faith in the right which always survives in the people. Let the skeptic aristocracies and despotisms of Europe make way for a people who have power to build up the home of humanity because they have faith in eternal, unchanging justice, and trust in that overruling foresight which brings forth better things out of evil and out of good.

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE BRITISH RECOVER CANADA. NORTH CAROLINA DECLARES

FOR INDEPENDENCE.

JANUARY-JULY 1776.

THE year 1775, as it opened, found the British in the undisputed possession of all the thirteen American colonies. Before the campaign for 1776 could begin, they had been driven from New England, and every governor had abandoned his post excepting in New Jersey, where he was under arrest, and in Maryland, where he was an officer of the proprietary and was left free on parole.

The British plan of campaign for the coming season was the earliest possible relief of Quebec and the recovery of Canada by an army which was to advance by way of Montreal, Lake George and Ticonderoga to Albany, and thus insulate New England, of which the reduction was reserved to the last. At the same time Howe was to occupy the city of New York and quickly reduce the middle states. The harbor of Newport, Rhode Island, was so alluring that, with Howe's approval, it was to be occupied by a garrison. The winter months, before the campaign in the North could be undertaken, were to be employed in restoring the king's authority in the South.

There remained near Quebec about four hundred Americans and as many wavering Canadians. Carleton, in the well-provisioned and strongly fortified town, had twice as many as both.

The chief command of the Americans devolved on Wooster, a frugal New England Calvinist, bred in the hatred of popery, inexperienced in war, and aged. The Green Mountain boys he summoned to come down by fifties or even by tens, as

fast as parties could be collected; of Washington he asked men, heavy cannon, and mortars; to congress and to Schuyler he wrote: "We shall want everything"-men, ordnance, and money; "hard cash we must have, or starve, or quit the country, or lay it under contribution."

Washington, without waiting to consult congress, recommended to Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire each to raise and send forward a regiment on behalf of the continent; and the three colonies eagerly met his call, for they strongly desired the annexation of Canada. Congress ordered one regiment from Philadelphia and another from New Jersey, to be soon followed by four or five more, and encouraged western New Hampshire to contribute a regiment.

In the first moments of sorrow at Montgomery's fall, citizens undertook with alacrity a march of many miles, through snow and over frozen lakes, without tents, to a country in that rigorous season almost inaccessible. Their unanimity, zeal, and perseverance called forth hopes of their success.

The expulsion of the British from Boston had amazed the Six Nations, and taught them not to rely on British arms for protection. James Deane was sent with a returning deputation to treat with them. The twenty-eighth of March was given by their great council to acts of consolation for those lost in the war; on the next day new trees, as they expressed it, were raised in the place of chiefs who had fallen, and their names published to the Six Nations. On the thirty-first the confederated tribes gave each other pledges to observe a strict neutrality in the present quarrel.

But to maintain a foothold in Canada, there was need of the strong support of its people. The Canadian clergy, in their zeal for Britain, refused absolution to the friends of the Americans; the nobility thought only for the safety of their privileges; and, without the support of their priests or their feudal superiors, the uncertain people could not be solidly organized. Congress had no troops except on short enlistments. Moreover, Quebec and Montreal were reached more readily from England by the Atlantic and the St. Lawrence than by the overland route from the colonies.

For four months Wooster remained the highest officer in

Canada, unequal to the station which he had never sought and from which he was impatient to be relieved. Yet he was ever ready, in case of need, to sacrifice his life for his country. In the early part of his command he wisely arrested Campbell, the Indian agent of the British, and La Corne Saint-Luc, and sent them out of the province. He allowed each parish to choose its own officers, thus introducing the system of selfgovernment in towns. He intended, through committees of safety and committees of correspondence, to lead the way to a Canadian convention which might send delegates to the American congress. With Schuyler, who was far the more testy of the two, he had constant bickerings, which divided the opinion of congress.

On the first day of April, Wooster appeared near Quebec. Scattered on both sides of the river and at great distances from each other lay about two thousand Americans, of whom not many more than half were able to do duty. How to find food for them was a great difficulty. Their batteries were insignificant, their store of ammunition most scanty; there were no engineers and few artillerists. One half of the troops who had wintered in Canada, and Livingston's regiment of about two hundred Canadians would be free in fourteen days, and would certainly refuse to remain. Arnold, who had been made a brigadier, withdrew to Montreal. The Canadian peasantry had been forced to furnish wood and other articles at less than the market price, or for certificates, and felt themselves outraged by the arbitrariness of the military occupation. Of the more cultivated classes, French and English, seven eighths were willing to assist in repelling the invaders.

On the twenty-fifth of March "the congress, being of opinion that the reduction of Quebec and the general security of the province of Canada were objects of great concern," directed Washington to detach four battalions into Canada. He received the order while yet in Boston; having completed the arrangements for sending to New York such troops as were then under his immediate command, he reached that city on the thirteenth of April, and made it his first duty to speed four battalions to Canada. "Too much despatch," wrote congress, "cannot be used in sending the battalion to Quebec, as it fre

quently happens that a week, a day, even an hour, proves decisive." But before this letter was received the brigade was sailing up the Hudson. On the twenty-third of April, Congress, without even consulting the commander-in-chief, suddenly gave him the order to detach six additional battalions for service in Canada, and inquired of him if he could spare more. Late at night on the twenty-fifth he received the order by express; his effective force consisted of but eight thousand three hundred and one; he resigned himself to the ill-considered votes of congress, and detached six of his best battalions, containing more than three thousand men, at a time when the British ministry was directing against New York thirty thousand veteran troops. The command of the brigade was given to Sullivan; among its officers were Stark and Reed of New Hampshire, Anthony Wayne and Irvine of Pennsylvania. "At the same time," so he wrote to congress, "trusting New York and Hudson river to the handful of men remaining here is running too great a risk. The general officers now here think it absolutely necessary to increase the army at this place with at least ten thousand men."

But congress, having stripped Washington of about half his effective force, next ordered that provisions, powder of which his stock was very low, and articles of clothing for ten thousand men, should follow, with all the hard money which the New England states could collect. Montgomery had asked for ten thousand men; they were resolved to maintain that number on the St. Lawrence, leaving Washington very much to his own devices for the protection of New York.

For Canada a general was wanted not less than an army. Schuyler, owning himself unable to manage the men of Connecticut, proposed to himself to resign. Thomas of Massachusetts, a man of superior ability and culture, though of little experience, was raised to the rank of major-general and ordered to Quebec. In the army with which he was to hold Canada, the small-pox raged; he had never been inoculated, and his journey to the camp was a journey to meet death unattended by glory.

He was closely followed by Franklin, Chase, and Charles Carroll, whom congress had commissioned to promise the clergy