under charges of oppression, extortion, and peculation, all of which were probably well founded. It was he who, first of all colonial governors, urged the arbitrary taxation of the colonies by England, the "taxation without representation which was a few years later the rock upon which the British empire was split asunder. In justice to him, however, it must be remembered that the first taxes he thus urged were for the prosecution of colonial wars, and that he had some showing of justification for that proposal in the niggardly and incredibly short-sighted refusal of some of the colonies to supply the funds which were necessary for their own defence. In many of his characteristics Dinwiddie resembled what we might call a pocket edition of those later and greater empire builders, Warren Hastings and Cecil Rhodes, not only in their faults but also in their merits, or in the merits of their achievements. For it was to him that the fulfilment of Spottswood's high designs was eventually committed, and it was through his pertinacity that they were forced into execution.

The method of conquest chosen was the familiar one, especially in English history, of a chartered company. In the middle years of the eighteenth century numerous companies were formed for the exploiting of the transmontane regions. Only one of these calls for notice. It was known as the Ohio Company. It was a Virginian organization.

C

the Indians, did not save him from ecclesiastical enmities, which finally forced him from the governorship. Six years after his epoch-making ride through the gateway of the Blue Ridge he was removed from office. But his love for Virginia endured, and he remained a resident of that colony. He became colonial postmaster in 1736, and in 1739 was selected to lead the forces which it was intended to despatch for the conquest of Florida, a work which to him would have been most welcome. But he died in 1740, with that work undone, leaving his last home to be, a generation later, the scene of the surrender of Cornwallis.

His imperial plans, as prudent and as timely as they were ambitious and aggressive, were held in abeyance, to be executed later at fearful cost, the usual penalty of neglect. They were finally revived and pressed to execution by another Virginian governor, who resembled Spottswood in only two particulars: He was a Scotchman, and he was an expansionist. If Spottswood was one of the best colonial governors, Robert Dinwiddie was assuredly one of the worst- after the infamous Berkeley, perhaps the very worst- the Old Dominion ever knew. Where Spottswood was bold as a lion, Dinwiddie was a poltroon. Where the one was honorable, honest, and high-minded, the other was mean, unscrupulous, and base. Dinwiddie was as arbitrary and arrogant as Berkeley himself, capricious and avaricious, and he went out of office

under charges of oppression, extortion, and peculation, all of which were probably well founded. It was he who, first of all colonial governors, urged the arbitrary taxation of the colonies by England, the "taxation without representation' which was a few years later the rock upon which the British empire was split asunder. In justice to him, however, it must be remembered that the first taxes he thus urged were for the prosecution of colonial wars, and that he had some showing of justification for that proposal in the niggardly and incredibly short-sighted refusal of some of the colonies to supply the funds which were necessary for their own defence. In many of his characteristics Dinwiddie resembled what we might call a pocket edition of those later and greater empire builders, Warren Hastings and Cecil Rhodes, not only in their faults but also in their merits, or in the merits of their achievements. For it was to him that the fulfilment of Spottswood's high designs was eventually committed, and it was through his pertinacity that they were forced into execution.

The method of conquest chosen was the familiar one, especially in English history, of a chartered company. In the middle years of the eighteenth century numerous companies were formed for the exploiting of the transmontane regions. Only one of these calls for notice. It was known as the Ohio Company. It was a Virginian organization.

C

It was composed of Virginians, among its members being Augustine and Lawrence Washington, the father and brother of George Washington, and Thomas Lee. It was chartered by Virginia, under Virginia's interpretation of the Treaty of Lancaster, of 1744, giving to that colony all territory at the west, as far as the Mississippi River. The French interpreted that as meaning only the lands south of the Ohio River,- to wit, the present states of West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. But Dinwiddie, as avaricious of land as of pelf, insisted that it meant the lands north of that river too, all the way up to the Lakes, including western Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin a goodly dominion, indeed! It was to secure that inheritance by actual possession that he sent the Ohio Company forth in the winter of 1750-51, across the mountains, into the valleys of the Ohio and Miami, to build a fort at the point where the Alleghany and Monongahela rivers unite to form the Ohio. These proceedings were authorized by Dinwiddie personally, and were again approved after the enterprise was well begun by an act of the Virginia legislature in February, 1752.

The venture did not pass unchallenged. Spottswood's plan had been to strike early, before the French were prepared to resist. It was now too late. The French were by this time prepared and alert.

They promptly disputed and denied the

right of the Ohio Company to enter the territory north of the Ohio River, and warned it off as a trespasser. More than that, with the readiness. and decision which marked the French administration of those days and which too often did not exist in the English government, at least in colonial affairs, France moved to make her protests and warnings effective with force and arms. Thus menaced, the Ohio Company appealed to Dinwiddie. In such a case Spottswood would probably have led an army across the hills without delay. Dinwiddie bade the pioneers stand firm while he sought aid from England. He did seek aid, but in vain. The English government would do nothing. Despite the earnest pleas of Townshend and others that it should make its ownership of the Ohio Valley effective, it contented itself with an academic expression of opinion that the territory in dispute belonged to Virginia. The practical enforcement of that opinion it left entirely to Virginia herself. Had it acted years before, on Spottswood's suggestion, it would probably have gained its ground without a serious blow. Had it acted promptly and resolutely in answer to Dinwiddie's appeal, it might have won at comparatively little cost. But it hesitated and dallied, and shirked responsibility, and thus, like all cowards, laid up for itself wrath against a day of wrath-in this case, one of the most dreadful days of wrath in history.