10,500 pounds currency (equal to about pounds sterling) as a contribution to the fu of the English Constitutional Society. In 1 Samuel Adams wrote to Arthur Lee, of Virgi - then in London and active in politics th as a supporter of the famous demagogue Jo Wilkes, proposing that committees should formed in the colonies to correspond with " Society of the Supporters of the Bill of Right in England. Towards the close of the followi year, the Boston town meeting took the lead banding together the Massachusetts town meetin by means of such committees of correspondenc Soon after, intercolonial committees of corr spondence were organized under the lead of th Virginia House of Burgesses. These committee are the lineal predecessors of our state centra committees.

Another feature of modern political method which was derived from colonial politics is the caucus. It made its appearance in the politics of New England long before the Revolution. The historian William Gordon, writing in 1774, says the system was in operation fifty years before that time. An entry of February, 1773, in John Adams' diary, presents a picture whose traits are curiously modern. He writes: "This day I learned that the caucus club meets at certain times in the garret of Tom Dawes, the adjutant 1 Hosmer's "Samuel Adams," Johns Hopkins University Studies.

of the Boston regiment. He has a large house, and he has a movable partition in his garret, which he takes down, and the whole club meets in one room. There they smoke tobacco till you cannot see from one end of the room to the other. There they drink flip, I suppose, and there they choose a moderator who puts questions to the vote regularly; and selectmen, assessors, collectors, firewards, and representatives are regularly chosen before they are chosen in the town."1

In the Middle and Southern colonies, the position of control held by the New England caucus was occupied by groups of leading men, the nature of whose association was as much social as political. Their influence was exercised in connection with the proceedings of the provincial assemblies, whose sessions brought on the gay season in the world of society. More closely resembling in their composition and demeanor the caucus club described by John Adams, were the committees of safety which sprang up during the Revolution, but for lack of such an instrument to work with as the town meeting, they had less direct political influence and were prone to mere rowdyism. Some did such work as Thomas Paine referred to in the second of his "Crisis" series of pamphlets, when he spoke of the shame felt by all sensible men at the tarring, feathering, and carting through the streets, of suspected loyalists.

1 Adams' Works, Vol. X., p. 110.

During the Revolutionary period, constitutional means of popular participation in the conduct of government were so undeveloped that party as an agency of political control denoted little more than Even a connection of interest among the gentry. in caucus-ruled Boston, John Adams says that three rich merchants, Thomas Hancock, Charles Apthorp, and Thomas Green, when united could carry any election almost unanimously. He remarks that "half a dozen or at most a dozen families had always controlled Connecticut." 1 The course of New York politics was determined by the attitude of the great families-the LivingIn the stons, the Schuylers and the Clintons. South, political power depended almost wholly on social influence and family connection. Democratic activities gave the Revolutionary movement explosive violence in Boston, and caused ferments in other centres of population which hastened the progress of events towards independence; but the urban population was small-not one-thirtieth of the whole. There were but four cities in the country with over 10,000 inhabitants. Boston had a population of about 18,000. The chief city was Philadelphia, with 42,000 population. One-fifth of the total population of the country was embraced within the bounds of Virginia, a colony which had no large towns. The mass of the people were outside the area of democratic influence.

1 Adams' Works, Vol. VI., pp. 506, 530.

There are still to be found isolated districts, particularly in the South, which exhibit to a notable extent the prevailing social conditions of the Revolutionary period. One finds among the people in a locality of this sort an abundance of political prejudice combined with very little knowledge. When one seeks the basis of an opinion it is discovered to consist of popular confidence in the local magnate from which it was derived, and thus being really an article of faith between man and man it is held with peculiar fervor. This relationship is finely illustrated by an anecdote recorded by the Marquis de Chastellux, who visited America in 1780-1782. Governor Benjamin Harrison, of Virginia, said that when he was setting out with Jefferson and Lee to attend the first session of the Continental Congress, his anxiety over the crisis was increased by the fact that a number of the plain people of the neighborhood waited on him and said, "You assert that there is a fixed intention to invade our rights and privileges; we own that we do not see this clearly, but since you assure us that it is so, we believe the fact." They expressed their confidence that he would do what was right, and returned to their homes to abide the issue whatever it might be, while he went on his way with a heavy consciousness of the trust reposed in him.1

Such deference by the people must not be taken 1 Chastellux's Travels, Vol. II., p. 157.