seat in Essex. When General Gage returned to England from America in 1775, he was offered the chief command of the British army in this country, though he was then almost eighty years of age. His benevolent ideas did not suit the temper of the British ministry then, and General William Howe received the appointment. When, at the close of the Revolution, John Adams went to England as American minister at the British court, Oglethorpe was among the first to congratulate him because of the Independence of his country. The brave founder of Georgia died next year, at the age of almost ninety years, with all his mental faculties in full vigor."* The great diversity of character among the inhabitants of the colonies of North America was sufficient to build up a great, free, liberal and glorious nation. This diversity was owing chiefly to the origin, early habits of the people and the climate. The early inhabitants of Virginia were from classes in English society wherein a lack of rigid moral discipline allowed free living and its attendant vices. This circumstance, combined with the influence of a mild climate, produced a tendency to voluptuousness and ease among the Virginians and their southern neighbors. Generally they ex * Lossing's "Our Country," Vol. III., page 482. hibited less moral restraint, more hospitality and greater frankness and social refinement, than the people of New England. New England was peopled by the middle classes of society, including a great many religious enthusiasts, very rigid in their manners, shy and jealous of strangers and extremely strict in their notions. They attempted to regulate the habits and tastes of society by formal standards. Their early legislation recognized the right to control the most minute details. of social life. The general court of Massachusetts, on one occasion, required the proper officers to notice the "apparel" of the people, especially their "ribbands and great boots." Drinking of healths in public or private; wearing funeral badges; celebrating the church festivals of Christmas and Easter, and many other things, which were really harmless, seemed quite improper to magistrates and legislators, and especially to the Puritan clergy, who controlled in all matters. The Puritans detested the Church of England, the Catholics and the Quakers, and whatever was indorsed by the latter was liable to be rejected by the former. When oppression and danger to the lives, liberties and rights came, however, the colonies were found standing firmly by each other. Puritan New England, Cavalier Virginia, Dutch New York and Catholic Maryland were all found marching side by side and clasping hands in a glorious e plu ribus unum. Agriculture was the principal pursuit of the American colonists of English antecedents. All along the history of the country, commerce and manufactures struggled against unwise and unjust laws for existence. With forced self-reliance, the people had been compelled from the very beginning to make their own apparel, furniture and implements of labor, which they could not buy from the looms and workshops of old England; and manual labor was regarded as honorable and dignified, especially in New England and the immediately adjoining provinces. Commerce of the English American colonies had a feeble infancy, and was dwarfed in its growth by oppressive navigation laws. Trade had hardly reached the dignity of commerce before the Revolution. Massachusetts vessels, as early as 1636, had made voyages to the West Indies with favorable results, and a small trade sprang up all along the American coast, which was regarded with joy as the harbinger of a flourishing American commerce; but England, always jealous of her rights, in 1651 passed the navigation act which warned. the American people that they were to depend on tilling the soil alone for sustenance. The ocean was England's. The restoration of this infamous law, in 1660, satisfied the colonists that their commerce was doomed, because it threatened to rival that of Great Britain. Not only was England interested in American commerce; but she was very much exercised over American industries, as she is to this day. After calling the attention of Parliament to American industries from time to time, laws were enacted to regulate them. In 1719, the House of Commons declared that "erecting any manufactories in the colonies tended to lessen their dependence on Great Britain," and they were discouraged. Earlier than this an English author had written: แ "There be fine iron works which cast no guns; no house in New England has above twenty rooms; not twenty in Boston have ten rooms each; a dancing-school was set up here, but put down; a fencingschool is allowed; there be no musicians by trade; all cordage, sail-cloth and mats come from England; no cloth is made there worth four shillings per yard; no alum, no salt made by their sun." The British government kept as strict a guard over the manufactories as she did over their commerce, and what few goods were manufactured by one colony they were prohibited from selling, bartering or exchanging with another. Infant industries, instead of being fostered and protected, met with direct opposition from the home government. It took the French and Indian wars to drive the colonies into the thought of uniting for mutual protection, and, once united, they began to sympathize with each other and brood over the wrongs heaped upon them by the mother country. That first little confederation of the New England colonies for mutual protection against the Indians was commented on. It had been a successful scheme and the wise men in the colonies began to argue that a general continental congress might be formed. There were mental giants coming; there were statesmen growing up, whose bright and shining lights were yet to illuminate all future generations, and they were gathering strength every day to grapple with the great problems. William Penn seems to have been the first to put forth a plan for a general union of all the colonies for their mutual welfare, in which he proposed the appointment of persons in each colony, who should meet at specified times in a general congress to mature plans for the common good, whose presiding officer should be a high commissioner appointed by the crown, and in time of war should command all of the colonial forces. plan somewhat resembled the Grecian Amphictyonic Council, and was commended by many thoughtful persons. The idea was discussed through the press in both England and America, not with any thought His |