atic effort to develop democracy in the English colonies in North America. In combination with the free representative institutions which had taken root there, it was very successful, and, when the final struggle between the English ruling class and the colonists took shape, the former had singularly few friends or allies in the colonies. What the results might have been if efforts had been made to build up a titled class in the colonies, with entailed revenues and hereditary privileges in the upper houses of the colonial legislatures, is not easy to imagine; but the prejudices of the privileged classes at home eliminated this factor from the problem. Every influence conduced to make the American commonwealths representative democracies; and the reservation of crown influence in the functions of the governors or the appointment of the council was merely a dam which was sure to be broken down as development increased.
Social conditions.16. Social circumstances had all the features of life in a new country, aggravated by the difficulties of inter-communication at that time. In the southern and middle colonies there was a rude abundance, so that, however much the want of luxuries might be felt, there was no lack of the necessaries of life. The growth of tobacco, indigo, and rice in the southern colonies was so large a source of wealth that luxury in that part of the country had taken a more pronounced form than in the others. The southern planter, trained in English schools and universities and admitted to the English bar, was more like an English gentleman in a condition of temporary retirement than an American colonist. The settler of the middle colonies was the ordinary agriculturist. The hardships of colonial life were the special lot of the New England colonist. For some reason—perhaps because the forests retained the snow on the ground—the New England winters were more severe than they are now. The rudely built house, with its enormous chimney attracting draughts of outer air from every point, was a poor protection against the cold. Travel, difficult enough at the best, became impossible in winter, unless the snow rose so high as to blot out the roads and permit the traveller to drive his sledge across country. Medical and surgical attendance was scarce in summer, and hardly dreamed of in winter. The religious feeling of the people was against amusements of all kinds, except going to funerals, an occasional dinner, and the restricted enjoyments of courtship. It was a point of honour or of religious feeling to exclude luxury from church equipment: stoves were not known in Connecticut churches until the beginning of this century, and yet new born infants were taken to church for baptism in the bitterest weather.[1]
Education.17. Wealth in the southern colonies was sufficient to give the better classes there an education of a very high order; and they in turn, by virtue of their political and social leadership, imparted something of their acquisitions to those below them. In the middle colonies commercial pursuits and those interests which go to make men of affairs had something of the same influence on special classes. In New England education was more general, even though it had no such advantages for special classes as at the south. The first immigration into New England contained an unusually large proportion of English university men, particularly among the ministers. These fixed the mould into which their descendants have been run, and New England's influence in the United States has been due largely to them. The town system added to their influence. Owing to it the ebbing and flowing of population through New England was not blind or unorganized. Every little town was a skeleton battalion, to be filled up by subsequent increase and immigration; and the ministers and other professional men made a multitude of successors for themselves, with all their own ideas. Considering the execrable quality of school and college instruction in New England, as elsewhere at the time, it is very remarkable that, as the original supply of university-bred leaders died off, there was a full crop of American-bred men quite prepared to take their places and carry on their work. Here were Harvard and Yale, the two leading colleges of the country, which in 1760 had six:—Harvard College, in Massachusetts (founded in 1636); William and Mary College, in Virginia (1692); Yale College, in Connecticut (1700); Princeton College, in New Jersey (1746); Pennsylvania University (1749); and King's, now Columbia, College, in New York (1754).
Commerce.18. Shipwrights had been sent to Virginia at an early date; but shipbuilding never made great head in the southern colonies, in spite of the fact that they had all the materials for it in abundance. At a later period ships were built, and it was not uncommon for planters to have their private docks on their own plantations, where their ships were freighted for Europe. But such building was individual: each planter built only for himself. The first vessel built by Europeans in this part of the continent was constructed by Adrian Block at New Amsterdam (1614). Many small vessels were built at the mouth of the Hudson river under Dutch and English domination, but New York's commercial supremacy did not fairly begin until after the revolution. Perhaps the hardships of life in New England made its people prefer water to land; at any rate they took to shipbuilding early and carried it on diligently and successfully. Plymouth built a little vessel before the settlement was five years old, and Massachusetts another, the “Blessing of the Bay” (1631). Before 1650 New England vessels had begun the general foreign trade, from port to port, which combined exportation with a foreign coasting trade and mercantile business, the form in which New England commercial enterprise was to show itself most strongly. Before 1724 English ship-carpenters complained of the competition of the Americans, and in 1760 the colonies were building new ships at the rate of about 20,000 tons a year, most of them being sold in England.
Manufactures and mining.19. The earliest manufactures in the colonies were naturally those of the simplest kind, the products of sawmills, grist-mills, and tanneries, and home-made cloth. The search for ores, however, had been a prime cause of immigration with many of the settlers, and they turned almost at once to mining and metallurgy. Most of their efforts failed, in spite of “premiums,” bounties, and monopolies for terms of years granted by the colonial legislatures. To this the production of iron was an exception. It was produced, from the beginning of the 18th century, in western Massachusetts and Connecticut, in eastern New York, in northern New Jersey, and in eastern Pennsylvania. All these districts were about on a level, until the adaptation of the furnaces to the use of anthracite coal drove the New England and New York districts, which had depended on wood as fuel, almost out of competition (§ 210). Until that time iron production was a leading New England industry. Not only were the various products of iron exported largely; the manufacture of nails, and of other articles which could be made by an industrious agricultural population in winter and stormy weather, was
- ↑ An extract from a New England diary of 1716 will give some notion of social circumstances at that comparatively late period. “Lord's Day, Jany. 15. An extraordinary cold Storm of wind and Snow. Blows much as coming home at Noon and so holds on. Bread was frozen at the Lord's table; Mr Pemberton administered. Came not out to afternoon exercise. Though twas so cold, yet John Tuckerman was baptised. At six a-clock my ink freezes so that I can hardly write by a good fire in my wive's chamber. Yet was very comfortable at meeting. Laus Deo.”
