protested much more vigorously against the Stamp Act than the old leaders desired.

The episode was afterward described by Thomas Jefferson, at that time a young law student, who watched with interest the doings of the Virginia House of Burgesses.

Mr. Henry moved and Mr. Johnston seconded these resolutions successively. They were opposed by Messrs. Randolph, Bland, Pendleton, Wythe, and all the old members, whose influence in the House had, till then, been unbroken. They did it, not from any question of our rights, but on the ground that the same sentiments had been, at their preceding session, expressed in a more conciliatory form, to which the answers were not yet received. But torrents of sublime eloquence from Henry, backed by the solid reasoning of Johnston, prevailed. The last, however, and strongest resolution was carried but by a single vote. The debate on it was most bloody. I was then but a student, and stood at the door of communication between the House and the lobby; . . . and I well remember that, after the members on the division were told and declared from the chair, Peyton Randolph came out at the door where I was standing, and said, as he entered the lobby, "By God! I would have given five hundred guineas for a single vote."

This was only the beginning of a long struggle between the old leaders, endeavoring to maintain their social and political predominance in the province, and the young radicals, backed by the people of the back-country, of

whom Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson and Richard Henry Lee were the leaders. In every stage of the conflict with Great Britain the old leaders showed themselves more cautious and conservative, the radicals more vigorous and uncompromising, in asserting the rights of the Colonies and in advocating measures of resistance. But the difference between the two parties went deeper. The radicals wanted to democratize the social and political institutions of Virginia, while the old leaders wanted to maintain their supremacy; and when the breach with England finally came and a new constitution had to be formed, Jefferson and his associates attempted to make the new constitution strictly democratic, with universal manhood suffrage, the abolition of entail in land and of primogeniture, and the disestablishment of the Anglican Church. Jefferson even went so far as to talk of the abolition of slavery. The democrats in Virginia were not able to get everything they wanted; but they accomplished much. They not only pushed the old aristocracy into the Revolutionary War, but they established a far more democratic government in Virginia than the old leaders of the colony would have established if it had been left to them. It was the declaration of rights prefixed to this constitution that was translated and circulated in

France, and that became in some degree a model for the famous French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen.

Very similar was the conflict in Pennsylvania between the Scotch-Irish and Germans of the interior and the Quaker-merchant aristocracy of Philadelphia. The people in the frontier counties complained that the apportionment of representatives, the money system, and the organization of the courts of justice were all devised to benefit the Quakers and merchants and to perpetuate their power. "We apprehend," so runs a petition from the German and Scotch-Irish counties of the interior, "that as freemen and English subjects we have an indisputable title to the same privileges and immunities with his Majesty's other subjects who reside in the counties of Philadelphia, Chester, and Bucks." The Scotch-Irish and Germans of the interior counties, together with the mechanics and artisans of Philadelphia, made the strength of the radical party. The frontier counties in Pennsylvania, like the frontier counties in Virginia, were strong partizans of the struggle against England, partly because they had no reason to like England, but partly because they felt that the argument in favor of the rights of the Colonies against England could be used equally in support of their own rights against

the privileges of the merchants and Quakers in Pennsylvania. In 1775-76, when the first constitution of Pennsylvania was established, the essential issue was between the Scotch-Irish radicals, who wanted a strictly democrat constitution, and the eastern men, who wished so far as possible to preserve their

own supremacy.

Nowhere was this conflict between the popular and the aristocratic classes more marked than in Massachusetts. The most influential man in Massachusetts at that time was Thomas Hutchinson, whose family had been prominent in Boston since the founding of the colony. He was a man of excellent education and of great ability, and in 1771, at the age of sixty, had held nearly every elective and appointive office in the province. He was also a man of wealth and related to most of the influential families of wealth in Massachusetts-the most prominent member of the Boston "aristocracy" which had long governed the Old Bay Colony.

In sharp contrast to Mr. Hutchinson were two men who became famous leaders in the Revolution Samuel and John Adams. In 1765 Samuel Adams was a middle-aged man who had lost a fair patrimony, and who was barely able to support his family. John Adams was a young lawyer, just coming into promi

nence; but he felt very keenly, as his interesting Diary enables us to see, that he had not a fair and equal opportunity in life because social opportunity and political power had come to be so largely monopolized by the small group of wealthy and closely interrelated families of which that of Thomas Hutchinson was the chief. And throughout the struggle with Great Britain, in which John Adams took a leading part, it is clear that in his mind the people of Massachusetts were endeavoring to emancipate themselves, not only from the autocratic control of the English government, but also from the domination of a Boston aristocracy; his animosity toward Thomas Hutchinson was much greater than toward King George or Lord North.

The way in which these two issues were often united is well illustrated in connection with the famous Stamp Act controversy. The Stamp Act required, among other things, that practically all legal documents should be executed on stamped paper. Almost every one in the colony, including Mr. Hutchinson, was opposed to the Stamp Act; but the Stamp Act could be resisted in one of two waysone legal and the other illegal. The legal way to resist it was not to execute any document which required the use of the stamped papers; the illegal way was to go on executing docu