ed, the colonies were really growing fast in
numbers and in wealth. Their whole population amounted at the time we
have reached to about 1,200,000 whites and a quarter of a million of
negroes; and this amounted to nearly a fourth of that of the mother
country. Its increase indeed was amazing. The inhabitants of Virginia
were doubling in every twenty-one years, while Massachusetts saw
five-and-twenty new towns spring into existence in a quarter of a
century. The wealth of the colonists was growing even faster than their
numbers. As yet the southern colonies were the more productive. Virginia
boasted of its tobacco plantations, Georgia and the Carolinas of their
maize and rice and indigo crops, while New York and Pennsylvania, with,
the colonies of New England, were restricted to their whale and cod
fisheries, their corn-harvests, and their timber trade. The distinction
indeed between the northern and southern colonies was more than an
industrial one. While New England absorbed half a million of whites, and
the middle colonies from the Hudson to the Potomac contained almost as
many, there were less than 300,000 whites in those to the south of the
Potomac. These on the other hand contained 130,000 negroes, and the
central States 70,000, while but 11,000 were found in the States of New
England. In the Southern States this prevalence of slavery produced an
aristocratic spirit and favoured the creation of large estates; even the
system of entails had been introduced among the wealthy planters of
Virginia, where many of the older English families found representatives
in houses such as those of Fairfax and Washington. Throughout New
England, on the other hand, the characteristics of the Puritans, their
piety, their intolerance, their simplicity of life, their pedantry,
their love of equality and tendency to democratic institutions, remained
unchanged. There were few large fortunes, though the comfort was
general. "Some of the most considerable provinces of America," said
Burke in 1769, "such for instance as Connecticut and Massachusetts Bay,
have not in each of them two men who can afford at a distance from their
estates to spend a thousand pounds a year." In education and political
activity New England stood far ahead of its fellow-colonies, for the
settlement of the Puritans had been followed at once by the
establishment of a system of local schools which is still the glory of
America. "Every township," it was enacted, "after