in the Middle Colonies;

The Navigation Acts and the impressment of seamen bore hard on Pennsylvania, and there was no lack of complaint against other forms of ministerial interference with colonial rights. But the Quakers, who were chiefly of the shopkeeping and trading class, had not experienced the long and painful struggle for existence that had been the lot of most of the other colonists. They had been prosperous from the beginning; and being conservative, timid, and slow in disposition and action, were not easily persuaded to make material sacrifices for the sake of political sentiment. Thus Pennsylvania was an uncertain factor in the revolt. New Jersey, with no Indian frontier, no foreign trade, and but light taxes, had few causes for complaint against England. Her rulers were thrifty, conservative farmers, who were disposed to be loyal; yet as they were of pure English descent, and tenacious of their liberties, they were gradually drawn into an attitude of opposition to English rule. New York was the only one of the middle group of colonies which stood stoutly against England. Since the days of Andros the people "caught at everything to lessen the prerogative." New York city, as the second commercial port on the coast, was naturally a seat of opposition to the navigation laws. But the Tory minority were nowhere more active or determined than in New York.

and in New England.

The New Englanders were pure in race, simple and frugal in habit, enterprising, vigorous, intelligent, and with a high average of education. They were small freeholders, possessed of a democratic system which had powers of indefinite expansion, and were trained in a political school well calculated to produce great popular leaders. Their political principles, developed by a century and a half of contention with the home government, pervaded the colonial revolt, and were carried out in the national government in which it resulted. The New England Confederation of 1643 bore fruit in the Stamp-Act congress of 1765, and still more in the Confederation of 1781 and the Constitution of 1787.

130. Results of the Half-Century (1700-1750).

Although the period 1700-1750 has not the interest of the previous half century of colonization, it has great constitutional importance. |The colonial spirit.| The rugged individuality of the founders of the colonies,—New England, middle, and southern,—was beginning to give way to a distinctly American character. The colonies lived separate lives; there was little intercommunication, but their interests were much the same, their relations with the mother-country were the same, and in the intercolonial wars they learned to act side by side. More than this, they all enjoyed a greater degree of personal freedom and local independence than was known anywhere else in the world. They had no consciousness of any desire to become independent. They had their own assemblies, made their own laws, and disregarded the Acts of Trade. In population the colonies increased between 1650 and 1700 from about 100,000 to 250,000; during the period 1700-1750 they grew to 1,370,000. A few passable towns were built,—Boston, Philadelphia, and New York. Their means were small, their horizon narrow, but their spirit was large.

The English Ohio Company.

As the year 1750 approached, there came upon the colonies two changes, destined to lead to a new political life. In the first place, the colonies at last began to overrun the mountain barrier which had hemmed them in on the west, and thus to invite another and more desperate struggle with the French. The first settlement made west of the mountains was on a branch of the Kanawha (1748); in the same season several adventurous Virginians hunted and made land-claims in Kentucky and Tennessee. Before the close of the following year (1749) there had been formed the Ohio Company, composed of wealthy Virginians, among whom were two brothers of Washington. King George granted the company five hundred thousand acres, on which they were to plant one hundred families and build and maintain a fort. The first attempt to explore the region of the Ohio brought the English and the French traders into conflict; and troops were not long in following, on both sides.

New colonial policy.

At the same time the home government was awaking to the fact that the colonies were not under strict control. In 1750 the Administration began to consider means of stopping unlawful trade. Before the plan could be perfected the French and Indian War broke out, in 1754. The story of that war and of the consequences of simultaneously dispossessing the French enemies of the colonies, and tightening the reins of government, belongs to the next volume of the series,—the Formation of the Union.

INDEX.