y two distinct streams of
immigration. The lowlands near the coast were settled by Englishmen
and by French Huguenots, but the form of government was purely
English. There were parishes, as in Virginia, but popular election
played a greater part in them. The vestrymen were elected yearly by
all the taxpayers of the parish. The minister was also elected by his
people, and after 1719 each parish sent its representatives to the
colonial legislature, though in a few instances two parishes were
joined together for the purpose of choosing representatives. The
system was thus more democratic than in Virginia; and in this
connection it is worth while to observe that parochial libraries and
free schools were established as early as 1712, much earlier than in
Virginia.

[Sidenote: The back country]
During the first half of the eighteenth century a very different stream
of immigration, coming mostly along the slope of the Alleghanies from
Virginia and Pennsylvania, and consisting in great part of Germans,
Scotch Highlanders, and Scotch-Irish, peopled the upland western regions
of South Carolina. For some time this territory had scarcely any civil
organization. It was a kind of "wild West." There were as yet no
counties in the colony. There was just one sheriff for the whole colony,
who "held his office by patent from the crown." [1] A court sat in
Charleston, but the arm of justice was hardly long enough to reach
offenders in the mountains. "To punish a horse-thief or prosecute a
debtor one was sometimes compelled to travel a distance of several
hundred miles, and be subjected to all the dangers and delays incident
to a wild country." When people cannot get justice in what in civilized
countries is the regular way, they will get it in some irregular way. So
these mountaineers began to form themselves into bands known as
"regulators," quite like the "vigilance committees" formed for the same
purposes in California a hundred years later. For thieves and murderers
the "regulators" provided a speedy trial, and the nearest tree served as
a gallows.

[Footnote 1: B. J. Ramage, in _Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies_, I., xii.]

[Sidenote: The district system.]
In order to put a stop to this lynch law, the legislature in 1768
divided the back country into districts, each with its sheriff and
court-house, and the judges were sent on circuit through these
districts. The upland region with its districts was thus very
differently organized fro