had swung against such tremendous gifts to grasping speculators, a feeling that would be well approved in these days. A new imperial land policy was announced by which small tracts from a hundred to a thousand acres each would be sold to individual bidders. This plan was fought by the best legal ability in England. Croghan was so frenzied at the impending ruin, that, having borrowed $4,000, he offered a million acres in payment for it.12 Something had happened in England. The Philadelphia philosopher, Franklin, and the Philadelphia merchant, Samuel Wharton, had fought the Vandalia grant and the Grand Ohio Company merger through all opposition, forcing even Lord Hillsborough to resign in defeat. But a reaction set in. General Gage, hero of Braddock's Field and not to prove so heroic in Boston, had been sent to America to report on the western problems. "From a radical expansionist he had become a most conservative antiexpansionist." 13 He was accused of opposing the Vandalia scheme. The Virginian opposition in London was blamed. But a greater reason prevailed. The town of Boston had a tea party. Thomas Wharton wrote from Philadelphia to his brother, Samuel: "I most ardently wish thou may be in possession of the grant, before the arrival of the full accounts respecting the conduct of the Americans touching the tea." But he was not. The arrival of the news threw the British ministry into such a rage against all Americans that the Grand Ohio Company bubble burst forthwith. Thus it was from Boston that Washington had the answer to his prayers against the Vandalians. He did not realize his debt, but his heart swung from the West to the East, and he tossed aside his dreams of wealth by speculation. He devoted his soul to the salvation of his people, and saved it thereby in the sacrifice. But Croghan wavered, was never quite rebel, never quite Tory, and died in poverty before the Revolutionary War was over, while Washington went on and on, enlarging in great ness. This, however, is no justification for stealing from Croghan his merited fame and labelling Washington the Father of the West, as well as of the Constitution, his Country, and nearly everything else worth fathering. While he fought, the wrangle between the Virginians and the Pennsylvanians over the West raved on. It was carried through the Revolution, invaded Congress, delayed the union of the colonies, and was kept up in the early days of the young republic. Washington took up the fray again after the war was over, and devoted his augmented powers to western problems; but that was far in the future, and it is necessary to revert to the days of 1771, when he did not even suspect a rebellion, and was still pleading with the English authorities to do him and his soldiers justice for their services. XII N HE FIGHTS FOR HIS SOLDIERS' LANDS peace as in ing to keep in line behind him. He could not even collect an assessment of charges attending the surveys, for which each subaltern officer was supposed to pay £10, the rest in proportion.' He complained of the backwardness and lukewarmness of the authorities, the difficulty of getting cooperation from the scattered claimants, so that "a few are obliged to wade through every difficulty, or relinquish every hope.' So he wrote November 7, 1771, to his friend, George Mercer, who had been in London all this while defending the interests of the Ohio Company. Washington had entered the claims of Mercer, as well as of Stobo and Van Braam, the old soldiers whom he had not seen since 1754 when he had turned them over to the French as hostages at the surrender of Fort Necessity. The hostages had never been redeemed and had had to escape for themselves after years of French captivity. Washington asked Mercer to try to buy up their claims for him "provided they will take a trifle for them." But his soldiers were not all willing to accept his trifles, and when they did their poverty and not their will consented. In his letter to Mercer, Washington complained further because the English Board of Trade was so scrupulous. He made exactly the plea offered always for huge corporations, land-schemes, railroad ventures, trusts; great risks should promise great profit, or they will not be taken: "It is a fact well known, and every age evinces it, that no country ever was or ever will be settled without some indulgence. What inducements have men to explore uninhabited wilds, but the prospect of getting good lands? Would any man waste his time, expose his fortune, nay, life, in such search, if he was to share the good and the bad with those that come after him? Surely not." 3 A new arrangement was at last made by which each field officer would receive 15,000 acres instead of 5,000; each captain, 9,000; each subaltern, 6,000, and each private soldier, 400. But Washington found many of the soldiers unwilling to pay their share of the costs, and he had an insulting letter from Major George Muse, who had been one of his military teachers, but had been accused of cowardice at the Fort Necessity battle. To him Washington wrote with unusual fire: "SIR, Your impertinent letter was delivered to me yesterday. As I am not accustomed to receive such from any man, nor would have taken the same language from you personally, without letting you feel some marks of my resentment, I would advise you to be cautious in writing me a second of the same tenor. But for your stupidity and sottishness you might have known, by attending to the public gazette, that you had your full quantity of ten thousand acres of land allowed you, that is, nine thousand and seventy-three acres in the great tract, and the remainder in the small tract. "But suppose you had really fallen short, do you think your superlative merit entitles you to greater indulgence than others? Or, if it did, that I was to make it good to you, when it was at the option of the Governor and Council to allow but five hundred acres in the whole, if they had been so inclined? If either of these should happen to be your opinion, I am very well convinced, that you will be singular in it; and all my concern is, that I ever engaged in behalf of so ungrateful a fellow as you are. But you may still be in need of my assistance, as I can inform you, that your affairs, in respect to these lands, do not stand upon so solid a basis as you may imagine, and this you may take by way of hint." 4 On November 5, 1772, he wrote to Lord Dunmore and the Council the glad tidings that the whole 200,000 acres |