RANKLIN.

I

All accounts agree in celebrating the marvelous growth of the
continental colonies in the eighteenth century. When the Massachusetts
charter was recalled they were in fact British "plantations"; weak and
scattered coast settlements, hemmed in by hostile Indians, separated
from each other by long stretches of wilderness; without the inclination
or the opportunity for intercourse, they struggled in isolation, often
for bare existence. At the time of the passage of the Stamp Act they
were wealthy and stable communities, whose thrifty and venturesome
people had long since joined colony to colony all along the coast, and
were already pushing across the mountains to occupy the great interior
valleys. And with rapid material development there had come a confident
and aggressive spirit, a proud and intractable temper, a certain
self-righteous sense of separation from the Old World and its
traditions. The very rivalries between colony and colony were the
result of close contact and daily intercourse, their very jealousies
born of interrelated interests and the recognition of a common destiny.

In 1689 not more than 80,000 people lived in New England, a trifle more
in the Southern, and half as many in the Middle colonies. Seventy years
later, when all New France could not boast more than 80,000 people of
European birth or descent, New England alone had a population of
473,000, the Middle Colonies about 405,000, and the plantations south,
of Delaware 417,000, not including 300,000 negro slaves. Within three
quarters of a century the people of the continental colonies had
increased nearly eightfold--from 200,000 in 1689, to 1,500,000 in 1760.
And material prosperity had kept pace with the increase in population;
so that there was some truth, even if some exaggeration, in the
statement of Peter Kalm that "the English colonies in this part of the
world have increased so much in their numbers of inhabitants, and in
their riches, that they almost vie with Old England."

Of this rapid growth the colonists were well aware. They took to
themselves full credit, as their descendants have done ever since, for
having transformed a wilderness into a land of peace and plenty. With
Richard Burnaby they could quite agree that such a town as Philadelphia,
planted scarce eighty years, must be the "object of every one's wonder
and admiration." It was this sense of unparalleled achievement that gave
courageous conviction to the ste