  The inscription in ink above, "Imported 1763", discovered in an edition of The Craftsman bought in the U.S.A., is a slight but significant indication of the interest that the contents of the periodical held for pre-Revolutionary colonists. One wonders who James Earle might have been. The writings of Bolingbroke, whose volatile political career, to my mind, seems to have been motivated exclusively by opportunistic personal ambition, are described in Wikipedia's somewhat confusing biography as a major influence "on American thinkers, especially John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. His works were widely read in the American colonies, and his ideas helped Americans formulate republicanism, and hence were a major factor in the American Revolution and in the writing of the Constitution of the United States." For a man who had been a Jacobite at least until 1716, and a Tory, at least until 1725, this seems a remarkable legacy. It may be explained, not by any consistent political ideology, but by his great personal resentment of Walpole --- aka Sir Robert Marral, and Robert Bold. See advertisements below. These remarks on the further development of The Craftsman's ideology in America, the mentions of Newfoundland and Georgia in the pamphleteering, the sustained admiration of Admiral Vernon by the Washingtons, as well as Monamy's depiction of the first Capture of Louisbourg, 1745, one of his last paintings, lead naturally to a few more reflections on events after his death in 1749. Here. |
Pulteney's pamphlet contains a clear suggestion that included in Walpole's plans for concluding a treaty with Spain, among a whole raft of unacceptable pecuniary measures, was the outrageous proposal that Georgia was to be surrendered to England's ancient enemy. See excerpt, below. 
It is small wonder then, that after his success at Porto Bello, and the widespread national rejoicing, the British colonists in America, and especially Georgia, revered Vernon in perpetuity; quite regardless of their later independence. top © Charles Harrison Wallace 2007
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