determination had been communicated by Martin's private secretary, Biggleston, to Harvey, who was the Speaker of the House. Saunders, in his prefatory notes to vol. 9, Colonial Records, page 29, says: "Harvey's reply to this was, "Then the people will convene one themselves. On the 3rd of

April, 1774, Harvey conferred with Willie Jones at Halifax, and on the 4th, with Samuel Johnston and Col. Buncombe at the house of the latter in Tyrrell county. "He was in a very violent mood," says Johnston, in a letter written to William Hooper on the next day, "and declared he was for assembling a convention independent of the governor, and that he would lead the way and issue hand bills over his own name." Moore, in his History, vol. 1, page 162, in writing of the same matter, says: "Harvey left New Bern at once, and first sought the counsel and aid of Willie Jones. In him he recognized a kindred spirit, and to him it was first proposed April 3, 1774, that Col. Harvey, as Speaker of the House of Assembly, should call a convention of the people at New Bern. Willie Jones gave his hearty adhesion to the scheme. He was to North Carolina what Thomas Jefferson was to Virginia."

Jones says, page 124: "There were five characters of that day, whose extraordinary services in the cause of the first Provincial Congress deserve to be particularly noticed. John Harvey, William Hooper, Willie Jones, Samuel Johnston and James Iredell, were the principal pioneers in that great and perilous undertaking." So that we find Harvey, to whom the whole State looked as its leader, singling out Willie Jones as the first man in the State with whom he could counsel as to the grave, momentous and extremely perilous step he was then intending to propose and advocate-a step so grave, so full of peril and danger to the life and property of all its advocates, that the counties of Chatham, Edgecombe, Guilford, Hertford, Surry, and Wake, and the Boroughs of Hillsboro, Salisbury, Brunswick Town and Campbelltown shrunk from electing delegates to the convention.

When Martin fled from New Bern, there were no courts and no laws, and it became necessary to provide some system of government for the new and budding State. The Con

gress on August 20, 1775, appointed a committee, of which Willie Jones was one, for that purpose, and out of its deliberations was evolved the Provincial Council, consisting of thirteen members, which was to be the supreme executive of the State when the Congress was not sitting. This council was composed as follows: Samuel Johnston, chairman; Cornelius Harnett, Samuel Ashe, Thomas Jones, Whitmell Hill, Abner Nash, James Coor, Thomas Person, John Kinchin, Willie Jones, Thomas Eaton, Samuel Spencer, and Waightstill Avery, all historic names, and the deeds and fame of the men who wore them, still shine down to use through the ages of the past.

The Provincial Congress which met at Halifax in April, 1776, abolished the Provincial Council and created in its stead a State Council of Safety. Of this council, Willie Jones was chairman, and so during its life was virtually Governor of the State. On November 12, 1776, a Congress met at Halifax, which had been called, and the delegates to it elected, for the purpose of framing and adopting a Bill of Rights and a Constitution, and appointed a committee to draft these instruments, of which Willie Jones was a member. The Bill of Rights was adopted December 17, 1776, and the Constitution December 18, 1776.

Jones says (page 287): "Thus were the Bill of Rights and the Constitution of the State formed. They are said to have come from the pen of Thomas Jones, aided and assisted by Willie Jones." Again, on page 139, Jones says: "Thomas Jones, of Chowan, was a lawyer of some distinction in those days and carried the skill and prudence of his profession to the American cause. Between this man and Willie Jones rests the honor of having written the Constitution of North Carolina. I speak upon the authority of a deceased friend (the late Judge Murphy) when I ascribe the distinction to Thomas Jones, although I do not deny the claim of the other. They were most undoubtedly the framers of the instrument; and it bears in so many instances the stamp of the peculiar services of Willie Jones, that I cannot give up the conclusion which I formed so many years since, that he had a material agency in its composition, as well as its adoption." This

was that grand and sublime chart of our liberties, which was handed down from one generation to another unaltered for sixty years, and but slightly changed or amended, until it was soiled by the foul touch of the hand of reconstruction. In the light of these facts, graven upon the history of our State, who can say with truth that Willie Jones was in 1775 without power or political influence in the State.

The Passing of Two Notable Men

BY THE EDITORS

During the month of December the SOUTH ATLANTIC QUARTERLY lost two of its most valued friends-Mr. Edward Atkinson, of Boston, and Chancellor Walter B. Hill, of the University of Georgia. The former had been a subscriber to the QUARTERLY almost since its establishment and had often written of his appreciation of its work; once or twice he had sent for extra copies for friends in England. Chancellor Hill was an adviser of the editors with regard to contributions, and at his death was planning an article for the pages of this magazine.

A still further reason why it is meet that their memory should be honored by the QUARTERLY is, that they were both greatly interested in Southern life and problems, and both had written so acutely and wisely, that their ideas and their words are imbued with fresh meaning in the light of their death. Mr. Atkinson said what he thought about Southern industrial problems with a certain bluntness, and as some thought with severity, but he was a critic whose words we need to heed--an intelligent and withal sympathetic critic from without. Mr. Hill was a critic from within. Of Southern birth and training and temperament, he bravely and yet sympathetically discussed-"in the family," as he liked to say-certain limitations and defects of his people. Perhaps, after all, they were not so far apart. As types of the intelligent Northerner who has become genuinely interested in Southern life, and of the intelligent Southerner who is doing permanent work in the building of a finer civilization, they deserve to be given more than passing notice.

The sudden death of Edward Atkinson on December 11, 1905, at the advanced age of seventy-eight, brought to an end a career which has been of varied and striking impor

tance in the economic affairs of the nation and has touched the life and interests of the South at many points. He was born at Brookline, Mass., on February 10, 1827, and educated in private schools. While his regular business was that of fire insurance and cotton manufacturing, he established a reputation as an economist by about forty years of active work in the authorship of papers and pamphlets on banking, railroading, cotton manufacture, fire prevention, the science of nutrition, the tariff, the money question and imperialism. He was an insistent and vigorous advocate of free trade and of the gold monetary standard. In his later years he was a leader of the opposition to the acquisition and retention of the Philippines.

He was of great service to the South by reason of his connection with the Atlanta Cotton Exposition of 1881. This owed its inception to an address which he had delivered in Atlanta a few years previously, and, therefore, to him must be given much of the credit for the resulting stimulus to cotton manufacturing in the South. He attended and delivered addresses at the exposition, and summed up its significant aspects in an important article which appeared in the Century Magazine for February, 1882. Since that time he has often visited the South, delivering addresses before manufacturing and commercial bodies.

Perhaps the last letter he wrote was devoted to suggestions for the promotion of the economic development of the South. On the very day of his death the Manufacturer's Record received a letter from him dated December 8.* He had been asked to express his judgment with regard to the success which had attended the efforts of the Manufacturer's Record during the past twenty years to promote the development of the South. His reply might have contained the undiscriminating congratulation and approval usual in such

cases.

What he did write was thoroughly characteristic of the man. He acknowledged the request he had received and then said:

*See Manufacturer's Record, December 28, 1905, p. 619.