Conceived in Liberty Volume 2 - Ludwig von Mises Institute

Spain in October 1739. A new wave of deadly European wars had thus
begun. Walpole, hearing the bells ring in celebration, prophetically warned:
"They are ringing their bells; they will be wringing their hands soon."
As we have seen, Georgia quickly used the war as^an excuse for an attack
on St. Augustine. But the most fateful result was the widening of the conflict
to France as well. Even though forced to go to war, Walpole tried to
keep the fighting as limited as possible. In this effort, he was joined by the
powerful British West Indian sugar planters. The planters only wanted to
cripple Spanish trade; they emphatically did not want a conquest of French
or Spanish colonial territory that would open up the latter's products to
English colonial markets. Prospects for limiting the war, however, were
ruined in 1740 by the outbreak of the entirely separate War of the Austrian
Succession.
The pacific Walpole was finally ousted in 1742, and the king forced the
Duke of Newcastle to bring into the cabinet the war hawk Lord Carteret,
who rushed in to try to mount an all-out war against France, which erupted
in 1744, and which became known in America as King George's War. The
war dragged on in costly and inconclusive fashion until peace was made at
the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, restoring the state of affairs of the
status quo ante bellum, including reconfirmation of the Spanish assiento to
the South Sea Company.
The most important event of King George's War in the colonies, and the
most fateful of future consequences, was the expedition that conquered
the fortress of Louisbourg from the French. From his appointment to the
governorship of Massachusetts in 1741, William Shirley had been zealous in
preparation and expenditures for a war. On assuming his post, Shirley
quickly and happily built up a patronage machine and the buildup was
created out of increasing war and military expenditures. Provision contracts
for favored merchants, recruiting fees, and naval expenditures lined
the coffers of Shirley and his friends; and, as governments have eternally
found before and since, the cry of "defense" proved to be a superb patriotic
cloak for these nest-feathering operations. Previous conflicts were
forgotten as contractors and subcontractors scrambled to win places on the
war gravy train. As Professor Schutz, a most favorable biographer of
Shirley, writes:
Defense activities raised a political tide in Shirley's favor. Speculators, contractors
and merchants prospered, and their profits attached them to the new
administration. The new defense policy won the support of many of Belcher's
allies. . . . Lesser men, in turn, looked to the contractors; a chain of favors
spread war business to a large number of people.*
•John A. Schutz, William Shirley (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1961), p. 84.
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