the Opinion I have of Your good Sense and Conduct, I refer the Management of the whole to You with the Advice of the Court Martial. Sincerely recommending You to the Protection of God, wishing Success to our just Designs, I heartily wish You farewell."[1]
Dinwiddie's expedition was in no sense the result of general agitation against French encroachment. And, as in Virginia, so it was in other colonies to which Governor Dinwiddie appealed; the governors said they had received no instructions; the validity of English title to the lands upon which the French were alleged to have encroached was doubted; not one of them wished to precipitate a war through rash zeal.
Before the bill voting ten thousand pounds "for the encouragement and protection of the settlers on the Mississippi," as it was called, passed the House of Burgesses, Governor Dinwiddie had his patience well-nigh exhausted, but he overlooked both the doubts raised as to Eng-
- ↑ Toner's Journal of Colonel George Washington, 1754, p. 13.
