--Old Mermaid Inn, Mount Airy; Old Red Lion Inn.]

[Illustration: PLATE III.--Camac Street, "The Street of Little Clubs";
Woodford, Northern Liberties, Fairmount Park. Erected by William Coleman
in 1756.]

During the whole of the eighteenth century Philadelphia was the most
important city commercially, politically and socially in the American
colonies. For this there were several reasons. Owing to its liberal
government and its policy of religious toleration, Philadelphia and the
outlying districts gradually became a refuge for European immigrants of
various persecuted sects. Nowhere else in America was such a
heterogeneous mixture of races and religions to be found. There were
Swedes, Dutch, English, Germans, Welsh, Irish and Scotch-Irish; Quakers,
Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Catholics, Reformed Lutherans, Mennonites,
Dunkers, Schwenkfelders and Moravians. Until the Seven Years' War
between France and England from 1756 to 1763 the Quakers dominated the
Pennsylvania government, and Quaker influence remained strong in
Philadelphia long after it had given way to that of the more belligerent
Scotch-Irish, mostly Presbyterians, in the rest of Pennsylvania, until
the failure of the Whiskey Insurrection in 1794. This Scotch-Irish
ascendancy was due not only to their increasing numbers, but to the
increasing general dissatisfaction with the Quaker failure to provide
for the defense of the province. The Penns lost their governmental
rights in 1776 and three years later had their territorial rights vested
in the commonwealth.

Its central location among the American colonies, and the fact that it
was the largest and most successful of the proprietary provinces,
rendered Pennsylvania's attitude in the struggle with the mother country
during the Revolution of vital importance. The British party was made
strong by the loyalty of the large Church of England element, the policy
of neutrality adopted by the Quakers, Dunkers and Mennonites, and the
general satisfaction felt toward the free and liberal government of the
province, which had been won gradually without such reverses as had
embittered the people of Massachusetts and some of the other British
provinces. The Whig party was successful, however, and Pennsylvania
contributed very materially to the success of the War of Independence,
by the important services of her statesmen, by her efficient troops and
by the financial aid rendered by Robert Morris, founder of the Bank of