In 1638 a college was founded at Cambridge in Massachusetts, partly by public funds, partly by private liberality. This was called Harvard College, after its chief benefactor, John Harvard. In Virginia, as we have seen, a college was founded about 1690. Yale College, in Connecticut, came into being in 1701, and by 1762 there were six colleges, all, except that in Virginia, in the northern colonies. Yet, in spite of the spread of education, there were in 1720 no booksellers' shops south of Boston, but only stationers' shops, where common school books could be bought. At Charlestown however, where there was the most educated and polished society to be found in the South, a public library was started in 1700. By the middle of the century these institutions had sprung up throughout the colonies, and became important as means of spreading knowledge. The first American newspaper was the Boston News Letter, started in 1704. Another Boston paper appeared in 1719, and one at Philadelphia at the same time. As is usual in a new country where nearly everyone is pressing on to make a livelihood by farming or trade, and where there is little leisure for reading, the colonies had not, before they became independent, produced many writers of note. In the seventeenth century there were in New England a great number of writers on divinity, many of whom played important parts on the Independent side in the great controversy between that sect and the Presbyterians. Few of their works have any lasting interest or value. Besides these a few books were written on the history of the various colonies. By far the best of these books is Stith's History of Virginia, published in 1747. The author was a Virginian clergyman, and had access to the private records of the Virginia Company. His book is clear and accurate, and for style it may take rank with the best English writers of that day. Unluckily it does not come down further than the dissolution of the Company. Hubbard's History of the Indian

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Wars is a minute record of the war with King Philip, marred to some extent by violent prejudice against the natives. Of all American writers during the period through which we have gone, the greatest was Jonathan Edwards. He was born in 1703, and died in 1758. He was the son of an Independent minister in Connecticut; he was brought up at Yale College, became himself a minister, and shortly before his death was appointed President of the college in New Jersey. He wrote on divinity and metaphysics, and is a sort of link between the Puritans of the seventeenth century and the great European philosophers of the eighteenth. The subject perhaps in which Americans most distinguished themselves was natural science. Benjamin Franklin, whom we have already seen and shall see again as a statesman, gained by his discoveries in electricity a place scarcely surpassed by any of the natural philosophers of his age. Indeed it was justly said of him that his exploits either as a statesman or as a philosopher, taken by themselves, would have won him an undying reputation. Godfrey and Rittenhouse were mathematicians of some eminence; and Bartram, a self-taught Pennsylvanian, was described by the famous naturalist, Linnæus, as the greatest natural botanist in the world. James Logan, another Pennsylvanian, wrote books of some merit on natural science and other matters, and at his death in 1751 left a library of four thousand volumes to the city of Philadelphia. In lighter branches of literature, poetry, fiction, and the like, America as yet produced no writers of any repute. This was perhaps because in New England and Pennsylvania, where there was most education and culture, enough of the old Puritan and Quaker temper was left to make men look with some disfavour on such works. Thus when in 1750 an attempt was made to establish a theatre at Boston, it was forbidden by the Assembly as "likely to encourage immorality, impiety, and contempt for

religion." The same causes checked the growth of art. Nevertheless, about the middle of the eighteenth century, there were three American painters of some note, West, Copley, and Stuart. The two former came to England. West gained considerable fame by large historical pictures. His works are for the most part disfigured by the coldness and formality which was common in the last century. Copley obtained some repute as a painter of historical pictures and portraits. His greatest work is a picture of Lord Chatham swooning in the House of Lords, after his last speech there. Copley is perhaps better known as the father of Lord Lyndhurst, the English Lord Chancellor. Stuart remained in America, and painted the portraits of some of the leading American statesmen. His works have considerable merit, and some critics even go so far as to consider him superior in certain points to any of the portrait-painters of his age, save Sir Joshua Reynolds.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE STAMP ACT AND THE TEA TAX.

Dispute between England and the colonies (1)—the Stamp Act (2)— the effect of the Stamp Act in America (3)—repeal of the Stamp Act (4)· Townshend's American policy (5)- proceedings in America (6)-the Boston "massacre" (7)—further disturbances (8)-the Boston Port Act (9)—the congress of 1774 (10)—proceedings in Parliament in 1774 (11).

1. Dispute between England and the Colonies.-How far the English Government could lawfully tax the colonies, was, as we have seen, a point on which there had been various disputes, and about which no fixed rule had been laid

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down. English judges had decided that the colonies might lawfully be taxed by Parliament. But the colonists had never formally acknowledged this claim, and Parliament had never attempted to exercise the right except for the protection of English trade and manufactures. During the reigns of George I. and George II., various proposals had been made for a general system of taxation in all the colonies. Sir William Keith, Governor of Pennsylvania, proposed such a scheme to Sir Robert Walpole. The Prime Minister replied "I have Old England set against me, and do you think I will have New England likewise?" In 1754, Lord Halifax, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, proposed that a general system of taxation should be put in force,' arranged by commissioners from the various colonies. Several of the colonial governors took up the idea, and it seemed likely to be adopted. The Massachusetts Assembly gave its agent in England instructions "to oppose everything that should have the remotest tendency to raise a revenue in the plantations." Other events happened about the same time to breed ill blood between the colonists and the mother country. In 1761 the custom-house officers at Boston demanded help from the colonial police officers in searching for some smuggled goods. This was refused. The right of the custom-house officers to demand such help was then tried before the Supreme Court of Massachusetts. The verdict was in their favour, but public feeling was strongly excited against the Government, and James Otis, the lawyer who opposed the custom-house officers, gained great popularity. In the same year a dispute arose in New York. Hitherto the Chief Justice had been liable to be dismissed by the Assembly. This right of dismissal was now transferred to the Crown. The Assembly tried to meet this by withholding the judge's salary, but the English Government defeated them by granting it out of the quit-rents paid for the public

lands. In 1762 a third dispute sprang up. A ship was sent to guard the fisheries to the north of New England against the French. The Massachusetts Assembly was ordered to pay the cost. They protested against this, and Otis drew up a remonstrance declaring that it would take from the Assembly "their most darling privilege, the right of originating all taxes,” and would “annihilate one branch of the legislature."

2. The Stamp Act.-All these things had been begetting an unfriendly feeling in the colonists towards the mother country. But in 1761 Parliament adopted measures which excited deeper and more wide-spread discontent. The two most influential ministers in the English Government were George Grenville and Charles Townshend. Grenville was painstaking, honest, and well-meaning, but self-confident, obstinate, and ill-informed about America. Townshend was a brilliant speaker, but rash and headstrong, utterly without forethought or caution, and carried away by the love of new and startling measures. He was at the head of the Board of Trade, which then had a large share in the management of the colonies. In March 1763, Townshend brought forward a complete scheme for remodelling the colonial governments. He proposed to make all the public officers in America dependent on the Crown, to establish a standing army there, and strictly to enforce the navigation laws. The last was the only part of the scheme which was actually put in force. Before the other measures could be carried out, Townshend had left the Board of Trade. His successor, Lord Shelburne, refused to meddle with the taxation of the colonies. But in 1764 he was succeeded by Lord Hillsborough, a man of no great ability or importance. Thus the control of the colonies was practically handed over to Grenville. The only part of Townshend's scheme of which he approved was the enforcement of the navigation laws, and he brought