n the revolutionary
period less prompt and decided in action than Massachusetts and
Virginia. In population New York ranked only seventh among the thirteen
colonies; but in its geographical position it was the most important of
all. It was important commercially because the Mohawk and Hudson rivers
formed a direct avenue for the fur-trade from the region of the great
lakes to the finest harbour on all the Atlantic coast. In a military
sense it was important for two reasons; _first_, because the Mohawk
valley was the home of the most powerful confederacy of Indians on the
continent, the steady allies of the English and deadly foes of the
French; _secondly_, because the centre of the French power was at
Montreal and Quebec, and from those points the route by which the
English colonies could be most easily invaded was formed by Lake
Champlain and the Hudson river. New York was completely interposed
between New England and the rest of the English colonies, so that an
enemy holding possession of it would virtually cut the Atlantic
sea-board in two. For these reasons the political action of New York
was of most critical importance.

[Sidenote: The two Carolinas and Georgia; New Jersey and Pennsylvania]

Of the other colonies in 1750, the two Carolinas and New Jersey were
rather more than eighty years old, while Pennsylvania had been settled
scarcely seventy years. But the growth of these younger colonies had
been rapid, especially in the case of Pennsylvania and North Carolina,
which in populousness ranked third and fourth among the thirteen. This
rapid increase was mainly due to a large immigration from Europe kept up
during the first half of the eighteenth century, so that a large
proportion of the people had either been born in Europe, or were the
children of people born in Europe. In 1750 these colonies had not had
time enough to become so intensely American as Virginia and the New
England colonies. In Georgia, which had been settled only seventeen
years, people had had barely time to get used to this new home on the
wild frontier.

The population of these younger colonies was very much mixed. In South
Carolina, as in New York, probably less than half were English. In both
Carolinas there were a great many Huguenots from France, and immigrants
from Germany and Scotland and the north of Ireland were still pouring
in. Pennsylvania had many Germans and Irish, and settlers from other
parts of Europe, besides its Englis