That which Smollett calls "the most important
achievement of the war" would never have taken place but for her, and Old
England, and not New, was to reap the profit; for Louisbourg, conquered by
arms, was to be restored by diplomacy. If the money she had spent for the
mother-country were not repaid, her ruin was certain. William Bollan,
English by birth and a son-in-law of Shirley, was sent out to urge the just
claim of the province, and after long and vigorous solicitation, he
succeeded. The full amount, in sterling value, was paid to Massachusetts,
and the expenditures of New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island were
also reimbursed. [Footnote: L183,649 to Massachusetts; L16,355 to New
Hampshire; L28,863 to Connecticut; L6,332 to Rhode Island.] The people of
Boston saw twenty-seven of those long, unwieldy trucks which many elders of
the place still remember as used in their youth, rumbling up King Street to
the treasury, loaded with 217 chests of Spanish dollars, and a hundred
barrels of copper coin. A pound sterling was worth eleven pounds of the
old-tenor currency of Massachusetts, and thirty shillings of the new-tenor.
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