and knows not only the merchandise in which he deals but how to sail a ship, for he often began life as a cabin boy or a supercargo. If he builds houses he applies on a larger scale the knowledge he gained as a carpenter or a mason.

The banker, whom the Jew typifies, seldom if ever sees the ship or the cargo which his money buys, and personally knows not whether the ship is seaworthy or the cargo of proper quality; he has no technical training, nor is it necessary; it is sufficient for him to be governed by the general law of commerce: that if a demand exists and it can be satisfied at a fixed price there is profit in the venture, for the success of which he relies on others better qualified.

Both the Jews and the Puritans were idealists, in both Jew and Puritan imagination was largely developed, although overlaid by the struggle for life in the case of the Jew and the struggle against life in the case of the Puritan; but neither idealism nor imagination interfered with the commercial sense; perhaps it was the possession of these qualities that made both so quick to grasp possibilities and to envisage the future.

The method of the historian and the manner in which history is written is to give undue space to describing in elaborate detail military movements, which to the average reader, interested in results but not in technique, mean nothing; and to attach importance to political events, which often left

no lasting impress upon the character of a people or the structure of society. This is perhaps the reason that writers have dealt so inadequately with the material condition of the American colonies at the outbreak of the Revolution. Both in English and American histories are to be found frequent detached references to the commerce and wealth of the colonies; the speeches and writings of the day throw additional light on the subject; there have been studies of the origin and development of a particular industry, but I know of no author who has had the ability and industry to assemble all the facts and present them in their proper relation as a whole. Such a work would be extremely valuable and of great interest.

My attempt to picture the material condition of the colonies from about the middle of the eighteenth century is necessarily fragmentary, and no effort has been made to go into the subject with the thoroughness its importance demands, which would be out of place here; but it is believed the facts presented and the conclusions they develop can be accepted as accurate.

Remembering Macaulay's injunction that "one of the first objects of an inquirer who wishes to form a correct notion of the state of a community at a given time, must be to ascertain of how many persons that community then consisted," the first inquiry must be directed to learn the popula1 Macaulay: History of England, vol. 1, p. 138.

3

tion of the colonies when the Declaration of Independence was adopted. In 1760, according to Channing, the people numbered a million and a half,1 including the blacks. About one third of the colonists were "foreigners," that is, they were not born in the colonies. At the time of the Peace of Paris in 1763, Lecky computes the population of the thirteen colonies at "about a million and a half freemen, and their number probably slightly exceeded two millions at the time of the Declaration of Independence." Franklin thought the population doubled every twenty-five years, exclusive of the increase by immigration. Wigglesworth agrees as to the time in which population doubles, but includes in that increase immigration. Winsor 5 places the population at the opening of the war "at something over a million," which is manifestly inaccurate. "Let it be remembered," Bryant and Gay say, "that Great Britain supplied three millions of people in America with almost every manufactured article which they needed." " Burke in his Speech on Conciliation said he had taken a good deal of pains to ascertain the population, which he placed at "two millions of inhabitants of our own European blood and color; besides at least five

1 Channing: A History of the United States, vol. 11, p. 491.

4

2 Lecky: A History of England in the Eighteenth Century, vol. 11, p. 267. Franklin: Works, vol. vi, p. 49.

♦ Wigglesworth: Calculations on American Population, p. 1.

5 Winsor: Narrative and Critical History of America, vol. v, p. 151, n. Bryant and Gay: A Popular History of the United States, vol. 111, p. 331.

hundred thousand others, who form no inconsiderable part of the strength and opulence of the whole"; but he added it was of little moment whether he put the numbers too high or too low, because “such is the strength with which population shoots in that part of the world, that state the numbers as high as we will, whilst the dispute continues, the exaggeration ends." 1

3

Bancroft's estimate of the population in 1754 was 1,165,000 whites and 263,000 negroes; in all, 1,428,000 souls.2 Dexter found that in twenty-four years, from 1743 to 1767, the population had grown from one million to two millions; and in 1775, De Bow places it at 2,243,000, “an increase of over one hundred per cent in twenty-five years, despite of the troubles of the times, which could not have checked immigration and promoted emigration." He swells his total by estimating the South to have a slave population of 500,000, making the aggregate at that time 2,750,000. These figures, of course, were not based on an actual enumeration, but are the calculations of careful men; but in 1790 the first Federal census was taken, which returned a total population of 3,929,214.5 This was probably under

4

1 Burke: Speech on Conciliation with America, Works, vol. 1, p. 456.

2 Bancroft: History of the United States, vol. II, p. 389. Cf. A Century of Population Growth, pp. 3–11, passim.

3 Dexter: Estimates of Population in the American Colonies, p. 49. De Bow: Industrial Resources of the Southern and Western States, vol. III,

p. 404.

5 Wright: The History and Growth of the United States Census, p. 17.

the mark, as there was a popular belief that the people were counted for the purpose of being taxed, and many of them understated the number of persons in their families.1 From all of which it is a safe conclusion, I think, that the population of the colonies at the time of the Revolution was not less than three millions. That of England at the same time was about ten millions; but that the population of the colonies increased much more rapidly than that of England is shown by a letter written by John Adams in 1775: "If we can remove the turbulent Gallicks, our people will in another century become more numerous than England itself." 2 Peter Kalm, the eminent Swedish botanist and traveler, was so greatly impressed with the strength and wealth of the colonies that he wrote, "The English colonies in this part of the world have increased so much in their number of inhabitants, and in their riches, that they almost vie with Old England." 3

America in that day was not rich in great stores of accumulated capital or the returns from investments; it experienced the economic trials of every other youthful community, and was cramped for ready capital and was always a debtor; its greatest hardship was the scarcity of specie, of

1 Tucker: Progress of the United States in Population and Wealth in Fifty Years, p. 16.

2 Winsor: Narrative and Critical History, vol. v, p. 151. 8 Kalm: Travels into North America, vol. 1, p. 206.