The congress now occupied itself with another matter. Its members were
agreed that great danger was impending; that without wise and just
treatment of the tribes, the French would gain them all, build forts
along the back of the British colonies, and, by means of ships and
troops from France, master them one by one, unless they would combine
for mutual defence. The necessity of some form of union had at length
begun to force itself upon the colonial mind. A rough woodcut had lately
appeared in the _Pennsylvania Gazette_, figuring the provinces under the
not very flattering image of a snake cut to pieces, with the motto,
"Join, or die." A writer of the day held up the Five Nations for
emulation, observing that if ignorant savages could confederate, British
colonists might do as much.[178] Franklin, the leading spirit of the
congress, now laid before it his famous project of union, which has been
too often described to need much notice here. Its fate is well known.
The Crown rejected it because it gave too much power to the colonies;
the colonies, because it gave too much power to the Crown, and because
it required each of them to transfer some of its functions of
self-government to a central council. Another plan was afterwards
devised by the friends of prerogative, perfectly agreeable to the King,
since it placed all power in the hands of a council of governors, and
since it involved compulsory taxation of the colonists, who, for the
same reasons, would have doggedly resisted it, had an attempt been made
to carry it into effect.
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