who indeed had also helped to colonise New Jersey on the opposite bank of the stream. Next it passed to the Dutch, and afterwards with the New Netherlands to the English. Still later it became under William Penn an appanage of Pennsylvania. So it continued in some measure until the Revolutionary War, while in other respects it might be termed a separate Colony. Thus it had an Assembly of its own, but that Assembly was in general convened by the Pennsylvanian Governor, and the province was often designated by the dubious phrase of the Lower Counties<<.

The Colony next in order owes its foundation to an upright and honourable statesman, Sir George Calvert, who had served as one of the Secretaries of State under James the First, and who under Charles the First was created Lord Baltimore in the Irish Peerage. To himself and his heirs as Proprietaries the new settlement was granted by the Crown, and in honour of Queen Henrietta Maria he gave it the name of Maryland. The chief city, which has now become one of the most flourishing in North America, received his own title of Baltimore. While yet a Commoner he had embraced the Roman Catholic faith, and relinquished office for its sake, and thus his settlement became the favourite resort for emigrants of the same persuasion. Yet the Roman Catholics as such enjoyed no special privileges or immunities in Maryland; freedom of conscience and equality of civil rights were from the outset conceded to all, except only the Socinians. For the clause granting this religious liberty was clogged with a proviso that >>whatsoever person shall deny or reproach the Holy Trinity, or any of the Three Persons thereof, shall be punished with death«.

The noble bay of Chesapeak, formed by the estuaries of the Susquehanna and Potomac rivers, is bounded on its western side by the shores of Virginia. This, the earliest of all the chartered Colonies of England, was first planned by the chivalrous Raleigh, and named by and from the maiden Queen, Elizabeth. Raleigh's coadjutors or lieutenants, as Lane and Greenville, bold and gallant spirits, were, however, more successful as explorers than as colonists. No real progress in settlement was made until the succeeding reign. Successive Charters were granted by King James, mainly in favour of the London Company, or as they were called >> Adventurers<«<, a term honourable then, though reproachful now. But that Company which might have risen to an eminence resembling the East Indian, greatly abused its trust; it dissatisfied the colonists, it became involved in dissensions

with the Crown; the Judges gave sentence against it; and finally in 1624 the Company was dissolved, and the Crown succeeded to its rights. Already had the colonists won for themselves the rights of a popular assembly; and these rights, which had been wrested from the London Company, were confirmed, or at least not annulled, by Charles the First.

Virginia, as the firstborn of the Colonies, grew, it may be said, to man's estate sooner than the rest. The settlers were chiefly of the Established Church, and comprised some of the highest rank of gentry, as, for example, the Lords Fairfax. Their staple produce was tobacco, a large source of wealth to them, as protected by a monopoly in England; at one period indeed in our common speech we may observe the word Virginia used as a synonym for the plant. On the whole then at the accession of George the Third there might be found in this Colony less, no doubt, of commercial enterprise than among its neighbours, but a larger population in proportion to its settled territory; and a greater degree of landed affluence, perhaps also of mental refinement. It is a striking fact that of the five first Presidents of the United States no less than four were natives of Virginia.

In the two Carolinas North and South, and in Charleston, the chief city of the latter, the appellation was either conferred or retained in honour of Charles the Second. A Charter of that territory was granted by that King in 1663 to a large number of persons as Proprietaries, including not only those who wished to go forth and colonise, as Lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret, but also various statesmen in office or favour at that time, as the Duke of Albemarle, the Earl of Clarendon, and Lord Ashley. Settlements were made accordingly, first in North and afterwards in South Carolina, sometimes increased by the emigration of persecuted Protestants from France or Germany. But the yoke of the Proprietaries proved hard to bear; some were distant and careless, others on the spot but grasping and oppressive; there ensued great misrule and oppression, and then the usual consequences, - popular insurrection and the final grant of a representative assembly. Still, however, the bickerings on a lesser scale continued, and finally in 1729 the remaining Proprietaries, on receiving the moderate sum of 17,500 l., surrendered their rights to the Crown. The staple commodities of the Carolinas were rice, tar, and afterwards indigo. Here, as in Virginia, the influence of a southern latitude becomes apparent; both the climate and the produce, and the modes of life resulting from them, more nearly, perhaps, approach those of Jamaica than those of Massachusetts.

The most southerly and the last founded of all these Colonies was Georgia. It owed its name to King George the Second, but its origin, establishment, and furtherance to James Oglethorpe, a Member of the British Parliament. This most worthy man had chosen arms for his profession at an early age, and ardent as he was then for military fame had served as a volunteer under Prince Eugene at the siege of Belgrade. In our own army he in after years, and by due course of seniority, attained the rank of General. But objects of benevolence and practical humanity had meanwhile become paramount in his mind. On entering the House of Commons he zealously applied himself to alleviate the sufferings of his kind. It was to him that the investigation and reform of our Prisons in 1728 and the succeeding years, as already related in this History, was mainly due. The same zeal for humanity led him to plan a colony, for the remoter districts, hitherto unpeopled, of South Carolina, which he intended as a resource and asylum for insolvent debtors in England, and for persecuted Protestants in Germany. He found associates in his benevolent designs; and in 1732 they obtained a Royal Charter for their new province during twenty-one years, not as Proprietaries, not with any collateral view of personal advantage, such as might be traced in even the most upright and highminded of all their predecessors, as in Baltimore and Penn, but solely, as the deed expresses it, »in trust for the poor«. At their own request they were expressly restrained from receiving any grant of land, or any emolument whatever, for themselves. Their Common Seal represented a group of silkworms at work, with the motto non sibi sed aliis; thus alluding not only to their own disinterested views, but also, more clearly, to the expected produce of their settlement.

A few months after the grant of the Charter Oglethorpe himself embarked with the first band of emigrants, and sailing up the boundary river of his province laid the foundations of the present city of Savannah. Other accessions speedily joined him, including Moravians from Germany; and so much favour did the rising colony find in England that the House of Commons voted in its support various sums of money which in the course of two years amounted to 36,000 l. It is a remarkable indication of the spirit of that age or of these persons that the land open to Jews was closed against >>Papists<<. But, on the other hand, it deserves most honourable commemoration that the introduction or use of negroslaves was expressly prohibited, prohibited notwithstanding

the complaints of many of the colonists, and even the secession of some. »Slavery«, said Oglethorpe himself, »is against the Gospel, as well as against the fundamental law of England. We refused, as Trustees, to make a law permitting such a horrid crime«. With the native Indians Oglethorpe had from the first cultivated friendly and frequent intercourse, and he trusted ere long to hail them as brother Christians. Many zealous clergymen, including, as we have seen elsewhere, the two Wesleys, had come forth from England to assist in their conversion.

Oglethorpe, however, though the Colony which he had founded continued to thrive and grow, was by no means always wise, nor always successful, in his conduct. Several of his favourite schemes, small and great, from the cultivation of silk to the conversion of the Indians, may be considered to have failed. Nor did his prohibition of slavery endure against strong temptation and neighbouring example, when once his personal influence had been withdrawn. Returning to England in 1743, after ten years' toil upon his object, he never again revisited the Colony. In his later years he had the honour of numbering Dr. Johnson among his friends, and he died in a green old age in 1785. But Oglethorpe might have died more happy had his days been more few. had lived too long, since he, a loyal subject, and soldier of the British Crown, and proud of having been the means of giving it one province more, survived to see that province severed from its sway, and arrayed against its arms.

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At the time when the troubles began the numbers of the people in these thirteen States might be estimated at two millions of European blood, and about half a million of others. Substantial comfort had prevailed among them from an early period, though in some, refinements, which we have come to consider almost necessaries, were of much later growth. Thus, notwithstanding the importance which the city of Philadelphia had attained, no measures were taken towards either lighting or paving it until 1757. As in all rising settlements, skilled labour commanded a high price; we find, for example, Washington, when only a stripling of sixteen, and employed in surveying among the Alleghany mountains, write as follows: >> A doubloon is my constant gain every day that the weather will admit, and sometimes six pistoles«. In only one of the States, namely, in Virginia, had there been introduced the English system of entails for landed property. Monarchical as was the form of government in these Colonies, as being part of the British dominions, it

can hardly be alleged that there prevailed in them at that time any arrogant state or haughty barrier of rank. As one instance to the contrary, we may observe that Benjamin Franklin, while still a very young man, and a journeyman printer at Philadelphia, used to be freely admitted to the table of Sir William Keith, the Governor of the province, who, as Franklin states, was wont to converse with him »in a most affable, familiar, and friendly manner«. But when the Revolutionary War had once begun, and the Monarchical distinctions been cast aside, we find another and more galling distinction that of wealth and poverty even in the same societies, most punctiliously observed. For example, in the year 1780, and at the same city of Philadelphia, a French officer, and warm partisan of the Americans, the Marquis de Chastellux, after describing a ball, proceeds to say: >>When the time came to go into the supper-room, our Minister offered his arm to Mrs. Morris, and made her walk out the first; an honour here commonly paid to her, because she is the wealthiest lady in the city, and because, all ranks being now equal, men are free to follow their natural bent, which is to award the highest respect to riches«.

At the first plantation or the legal settlement of each American Colony, its government had been framed upon the English model, so far as its circumstances would allow. There was in each, a House of Assembly elected by the people. There was a Council, sometimes derived from election, but more commonly from nomination, or sometimes with a right of Veto on the former. There was a Governor appointed by the Crown, or, in the case of Proprietary rights, by the Proprietaries and the Crown in conjunction. In one single Colony, namely, in Connecticut, the Governor owed his post to popular election. But besides this and a few other such exceptions of principle, the general outline was moulded into a great variety of forms, nor were the laws of any one province assimilated in all respects to the laws of any other. There also prevailed between them no small amount of rival pretensions, of jealousies and heartburnings. It may be asserted that such variations were fully equal to those between the Italian states at the present day; there were as many and as wide differences, legal, political, and social; and in the case of America there were religious superadded. Thus the difficulty of concert and union, which we so often hear alleged in Italy, must have been felt not less keenly in North America. It is a difficulty which should ever be borne in mind by every candid historian of the Re