But the most elaborate work on the subject is
the _Historical Review of the Constitution and Government of
Pennsylvania_, inspired and partly written by Franklin. It is hotly
partisan, and sometimes sophistical and unfair. Articles on the quarrel
will also be found in the provincial newspapers, especially the _New
York Mercury,_ and in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for 1755 and 1756. But
it is impossible to get any clear and just view of it without wading
through the interminable documents concerning it in the _Colonial
Records of Pennsylvania_ and the _Pennsylvania Archives_.]
Chapter 11
1712-1756
Montcalm
On the eighteenth of May, 1756, England, after a year of open hostility,
at length declared war. She had attacked France by land and sea, turned
loose her ships to prey on French commerce, and brought some three
hundred prizes into her ports. It was the act of a weak Government,
supplying by spasms of violence what it lacked in considerate
resolution. France, no match for her amphibious enemy in the game of
marine depredation, cried out in horror; and to emphasize her complaints
and signalize a pretended good faith which her acts had belied,
ostentatiously released a British frigate captured by her cruisers. She
in her turn declared war on the ninth of June: and now began the most
terrible conflict of the eighteenth century; one that convulsed Europe
and shook America, India, the coasts of Africa, and the islands of the
sea.
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