The Carolina clergy at first formed a superior class, as nearly all the early ministers were men carefully selected and sent out from England by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Here there was special interest in the religious welfare of the slaves. All over the South the Church ministers owed much to competition with those of sects, especially those of the Presbyterians, to which body belonged many of the Scotch and Irish immigrants after 1700. Dissent was dominant everywhere at the North. A vast majority of the people even in New York were dissenters, though the Episcopal clergy there successfully resisted all efforts against the Church tax, notwithstanding the fact that the same injustice in Massachusetts and Connecticut oppressed their brethren in those colonies. The New York clergy also fought every sort of liberal law, as to enable dissenting bodies of Christians to hold property. It was in good degree this attitude of theirs that filled the country, Virginia too, with such hatred of bishops.

But this spirit was fully matched by that of the Independent ministers in New England. Their dissent was aggressive, persecuting, puritanical. Meeting-houses were cold, sermons long and dry, music vocal only. Religious teaching and the laws it procured, foolishly assumed to regulate all the acts of life. Extravagance was denounced and fined. In 1750, the Massachusetts Assembly forbade theatres as "likely to encourage immorality and impiety." Rhode Island took similar action

in 1762.

The ministers of Boston viewed bishops almost

as emissaries of the devil. Herein in fact lay the primary, some have thought the deepest and most potent, cause of the Revolution, since kings and the bishops of London incessantly sought to establish Anglicanism in Massachusetts, and English politicians deemed it outrageous that conformists should be denied any of that colony's privileges. For some time, under William and Mary's charter, in this province where Congregationalism had till now had everything its own way, only Church clergymen could celebrate marriage. In New York and Maryland, too, hostility to the establishment greatly stimulated disloyalty. This was true even in Anglican Virginia, where the Church found it no easier to keep power than it was in Massachusetts to get power, and where the clergy were unpopular, concerned more for tithes than for souls.

Colleges were founded early in several colonies. Harvard dates from 1638; William and Mary, in Virginia, from 1693; Yale, from 1701; the College of New Jersey from 1746, its old Nassau Hall, built in 1756 and named in honor of William III. of the House of Nassau, being then the largest structure in British America. The University of Pennsylvania dates from 1753; King's College, now Columbia, from 1754; Rhode Island College, now Brown University, from 1764. Educational facilities in general varied greatly with sections, being miserable in the southern colonies, fair in the central, excellent in the northern. In Virginia, during the period now under our survey, schools were almost unknown. In Maryland, from 1728, a free

school was established by law in each county. These were the only such schools in the South before 1770. Philadelphia and New York had good schools by 1700, rural Pennsylvania none of any sort till 1750, then only the poorest. A few New York and New Jersey towns of New England origin had free schools before the Revolution. Many Southern planters sent their sons to school in England. In popular education New England led not only the continent but the world, there being a school-house, often several, in each town. Every native adult in Massachusetts and Connecticut was able to read and write. In this matter Rhode Island was far behind its next neighbors.

Newspapers were distributed much as schools were. The first printing-press was set up at Cambridge in 1639. The first newspaper, Publick Occurrences Foreign and Domestic, was started in Boston in 1690. The first permanent newspaper, the Boston News Letter, began in 1704, and it had a Boston and a Philadelphia rival in 1719. The Maryland Gazette was started at Annapolis in 1727, a weekly at Williamsburg, Va., in 1736. In 1740 there were eleven newspapers in all in the colonies: one each in New York, South Carolina, and Virginia (from 1736), three in Pennsylvania, one of them German, and five in Boston. The Connecticut Gazette was started at New Haven in 1755; The Summary, at New London, in 1758. The Rhode Island Gazette was begun by James Franklin, September 27, 1732, but was not permanent. The Providence Gazette and Country Journal put forth its first issue October 20, 1762. In 1775, Salem, Newburyport, and

Portsmouth had each its newspaper. The first daily in the country, the Pennsylvania Packet, began in 1784.

Other literature of American origin flourished in New England nearly alone. It consisted of sermons, social and political tracts, poetry, history, and memoirs. The clergy were the chief but not the sole authors. Of readers, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston had many. Much reading matter came from England. Charleston enjoyed a public library from 1700. About 1750 there were several others. That left to Philadelphia in 1751, by James Logan, comprised 4,000 volumes.

William and Mary had established a postal system for America, placing Thomas Neale, Esquire, at its head. The service hardly became a system till 1738. In ordinary weather a post-rider would receive the Philadelphia mail at the Susquehannah River on Saturday evening, be at Annapolis on Monday, reach the Potomac Tuesday night, on Wednesday arrive at New Post, near Fredericksburg, and by Saturday evening at Williamsburg, whence, once a month, the mail went still farther south, to Edenton, N. C. Thus a letter was just a week in transit between Philadelphia and the capital of Virginia. In New England, from here to New York, and between New York and Philadelphia, despatch was much better.

The learned professions also were best patronized and had the ablest personnel in New England, where all three, but particularly the clergy, were strong and honored. Outside of New England, till 1750, lawyers and physicians, especially in the

country parts, were poorly educated and little respected. Each formidable disease had the people at its mercy. Diphtheria, then known as the throat disease, swept through the land once in about thirty years. Small-pox was another frequent scourge. In 1721 it attacked nearly six thousand persons in Boston, about half the population, killing some nine hundred. The clergy, almost to a man, decried vaccination when first vented, proclaiming it an effort to thwart God's will. Clergymen, except perhaps in Carolina and Virginia, were somewhat better educated, yet those in New England led all others in this respect.

Colonial America boasted many great intellectual lights. President Edwards won European reputation as a thinker, and so did Franklin as a statesman and as a scientist. Linnæus named our Bartram, a Quaker farmer of Pennsylvania, the greatest natural botanist then living. Increase Mather read and wrote both Greek and Hebrew, and spoke Latin. He and his son Cotton were veritable wonders in literary attainment. The one was the author of ninety-two books, the other of three hundred and eighty-three. The younger Winthrop was a member of the Royal Society. Copley, Stuart, and West became distinguished painters.

Except for mails, there were in the colonies no public conveyances by land till just before the Revolution. After stage lines were introduced, to go from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh required seven days; from Philadelphia to New York at first three, later two. The earliest coach to attain the