provinces possessed of each other antecedently of the American Revolution, and instead of being dissipated by an event so honorable to them all, has been cherished and perpetuated for political party purposes."

Colonial society was a copy of English society of the same period, a little caricatured. The caste spirit was rather more pronounced, for it had more to contend with, and hence was disposed to emphasize visible distinctions. People were expected to dress according to their rank and keep their proper place. At the inn, the parlor and club-room were reserved for the gentry; the tradesman and his wife went to the tap-room or the kitchen. A man's seat in church was expected to correspond with his social position. Even in New England, whose levelling tendencies were one source of the prejudice felt against that section in other colonies, it was the practice to "dignify the congregation" in the assignment of sittings. Common people wore leather and homespun; gentlemen put flounces of lace on their linen, adorned their coats and waistcoats with gold and silver braid, wore silks and satins, even in such colors as red and blue, and crowned the ornate edifice of their attire by removing the natural thatch of their heads to give place to the crisp volutes and frizzed convexities devised by the art of the perruquier. When men could dress in such fashion, imagine to what monstrosities of elegance the ladies were

pushed to maintain the superiority of their sex! Brissot de Warville, a French traveller, who visited this country soon after the Revolutionary War, was astonished at the luxurious fashions and costly dress of the ladies, and thought some gowns he saw at a party given by Cyrus Griffin, president of Congress, were scandalously indecent. Simplicity of dress did not come in until after the French Revolution.

Politics, the organic activity of society in its civic character, bore a like aristocratic stamp. As in England at the same period, the laws bore hardly on the poor and tended to perpetuate distinctions between patricians and plebeians. Poor Richard's saying, that the borrower is servant to the lender, had special point to it in the days of The humane reforms, imprisonment for debt.

which in every civilized country have swept away the ancient barbarities of the penal code, were yet to be begun. The jails were sinks of filth and depravity; and the whipping-post, the stocks, and the pillory were in active employment. The suffrage was closely restricted by property qualifications, and when it came to holding office these were raised to a point at which only men of wealth were eligible. Drinking was the inevitable accompaniment of the transaction of public business of almost every kind and at election times In New England, liquor flowed in abundance. the town-meeting system produced peculiar politi

cal methods which bore the stamp of Puritan church procedure, but in most of the colonies electioneering was carried on as in England. Candidates announced themselves in flourishing addresses to electors and were expected to maintain lavish hospitality. Among the items of a bill of election expenses incurred by Washington in 1757 are one hogshead and one barrel of punch, thirtyfive gallons of wine, and forty-three gallons of hard cider.

Early in the history of the colonies variations from English methods began which eventually came to be regarded as American characteristics; but Americanisms in politics, like Americanisms in speech, are apt to be Anglicisms which died out in England but survived in the new world. The American practice of requiring that representatives should be inhabitants of their districts, was an old idea of English politics. Anciently the king's writ, expressly confirmed by a statute of Parliament, required that none but resident burgesses should be elected to Parliament. The law was disregarded and became dead letter in England; transplanted to America it lived and flourished.

The early introduction of the ballot in America was likewise the fruition of ideas which in England fell upon stony ground, but which found a fair field in the new world. Among the reform projects with which the political theorists of the

seventeenth century busied themselves, the ballot occupied a prominent place. A political tract, published in the time of William and Mary, refers to the use of the ballot as being then an old established custom in the borough of Limmington, Hampshire; but this was an exception which passed away, and the ballot was not established in England until the Australian system was adopted in 1872. In the colonies, however, the ballot system took root at an early period. It is prominent in the philosophic constitutions prepared for the proprietary colonies of South Carolina, West Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Theoretic considerations had probably, however, much less to do with the growth of the ballot system than the circumstances of colonial life. Before the formal introduction of the ballot anywhere, a practice had sprung up in Virginia, in the New England colonies, and perhaps elsewhere, of sending votes in writing to avoid the trouble of personal attendance at elections. This practice was suppressed in Virginia at an early date, but was methodized into a regular system throughout New England, where elections came to be known as "proxings" because the votes of the freemen were given by proxy by means of voting papers. At the time of the Revolution, New Jersey and North Carolina, which had at one time used the ballot, had adopted the English system of viva-voce voting, 'which also prevailed in New York, New Jer

sey, Maryland, Virginia, and Georgia. Voting papers or ballots were in use throughout New England and in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and South Carolina.1 The ballot, in the modern sense of a party ticket put into the hands of voters, is a comparatively late development. In 1794, John Adams extenuated "a very unwarranted and indecent attempt upon the freedom of elections" committed by his own party, on the ground that "the opposite party

...

practise arts nearly as unwarrantable in secret, and by sending agents with printed votes.'

"2

Party organization, whose astonishing development since the adoption of the constitution causes it to be regarded as peculiar to the politics of the republic, is a growth from colonial politics, and its beginnings were common to England and America. In 1769, during the excitement over the famous Middlesex election, the holding of mass meetings first became a political practice in England, and many reform associations were organized. keep up communication with one another they appointed committees on correspondence. The American Whigs were in hearty sympathy with these movements. Before the year was out the South Carolina assembly had an angry contention with the provincial council, because the latter refused to concur in a grant of

1 Bishop's Colonial Elections, Chap. III.

2 Adams' Works, Vol. I., p. 474.

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