their principal place of association at leisure hours. Industrious habits are here inculcated in the same way. In the communities of the United Brethren in America, the facilities of supporting families, and the consequent early marriages, have superseded the necessity of single brethren's houses; but they all have sisters' houses of the above description, which afford a comfortable asylum to aged unmarried females, while they furnish an opportunity of attending to the further education and improvement of the female youth after they have left school. In the larger communities, similar houses afford the same advantages to such widows as desire to live retired, and are called widows' houses. The individuals residing in these establishments pay a small rent, by which, and by the sums paid for their board, the expenses of these houses are defrayed, assisted occasionally by the profits on the sale of ornamental needlework, &c., on which some of the inmates subsist. The aged and needy are supported by the same means. Each division of sex and station just alluded to-viz. widows, single men and youths, single women and girls past the age of childhoodis placed under the special guidance of elders of their own description, whose province it is to assist them with good advice and admonition, and to attend, as much as may be, to the spiritual and temporal welfare of each individual. The children of each sex are under the immediate care of the superintendent of the single choirs, as these divisions are termed. Their instruction in religion, and in all the necessary branches of human knowledge, in good schools, carried on separately for each sex, is under the special superintendence of the stated minister of each community, and of the board of elders. Similar special elders are charged to attend to the spiritual welfare of the married people. All these elders, of both sexes, together with the stated minister, to whom the preaching of the gospel is chiefly committed (although all other elders who may be qualified participate therein), and with the persons to whom the economical concerns of the community are intrusted, form together the board of elders, in which rests the government of the community, with the concurrence of the committee elected by the inhabitants for all temporal concerns. This committee superintends the observance of all regulations, has charge of the police, and decides differences between individuals. Matters of a general nature

are submitted to a meeting of the whole community, consisting either of all male members of age, or of an intermediate body elected by them. Public meetings are held every evening in the week. Some of these are devoted to the reading of portions of Scripture, others to the communication of accounts from the missionary stations, and others to the singing of hymns or selected verses. On Sunday mornings, the church litany is publicly read, and sermons are delivered to the congregation, which, in many places, is the case likewise in the afternoon. In the evening, discourses are delivered, in which the texts for that day are explained and brought home to the particular circumstances of the community. Besides these regular means of edification, the festival days of the Christian church, such as Easter, Pentecost, Christmas, &c., are commemorated in a special manner, as well as some days of peculiar interest in the history of the society. A solemn church music constitutes a prominent feature of their means of edification, music in general being a favorite employment of the leisure of many. On particular occasions, and before the congregation meets to partake of the Lord's supper, they assemble expressly to listen to instrumental vocal music interspersed with hymns, in which the whole congregation joins, while they partake together of a cup of coffee, tea or chocolate, and light cakes, in token of fellowship and brotherly union. This solemnity is called a love-feast, and is in imitation of the custom of the agapa in the primitive Christian churches. The Lord's supper is celebrated at stated intervals, generally by all communicant members together, under very solemn but simple rites. Easter morning is devoted to a solemnity of a peculiar kind. At sunrise, the congregation assembles in the grave-yard; a service, accompanied by music, is celebrated, expressive of the joyful hopes of immortality and resurrection, and a solemn commemoration is made of all who have, in the course of the last year, departed this life from among them, and " gone home to the Lord"— an expression they often use to designate death. Considering the termination of the present life no evil, but the entrance upon an eternal state of bliss to the sincere disciples of Christ, they desire to divest this event of all its terrors. The decease of every individual is announced to the community by solemn music from a band of instruments. Outward appearances of mourning are dis

countenanced. The whole congregation follows the bier to the grave-yard (which is commonly laid out as a garden), accompanied by a band, playing the tunes of well-known verses, which express the hopes of eternal life and resurrection; and the corpse is deposited in the simple grave during the funeral service. The preservation of the purity of the community is intrusted to the board of elders and its different members, who are to give instruction and admonition to those under their care, and make a discreet use of the established church discipline. In cases of immoral conduct, or flagrant disregard of the regulations of the society, this discipline is resorted to. If expostulations are not successful, of fenders are for a time restrained from participating in the holy communion, or called before the committee. For pertinacious bad conduct, or flagrant excesses, the culpable individual is dismissed from the society. The ecclesiastical church officers, generally speaking, are the bishops, through whom the regular succession of ordination, transmitted to the United Brethren through the ancient church of the Bohemian and Moravian Brethren, is preserved, and who alone are authorized to ordain ministers, but possess no authority in the government of the church, except such as they derive from some other office, being most frequently the presidents of some board of elders; the civil seniors, to whom, in subordination to the board of elders of the Unity, belongs the management of the external relations of the society; the presbyters, or ordained stated ministers of the communities, and the deacons. The degree of deacon is the first bestowed upon young ministers and missionaries, by which they are authorized to administer the sacraments. Females, although elders among their own sex, are never ordained; nor have they a vote in the deliberations of the board of elders, which they attend for the sake of information only. It now remains to give some account of the numbers and extension of this society, which are often strangely exaggerated. On the continent of Europe, together with Great Britain, the number of persons living in their different communities, or formed into societies closely connected with the Unity, does not exceed thirteen or fourteen thousand, including children. Their number in the U. States of America falls something short of four thousand souls. Besides these, there are about three times this number of persons dis

persed through Germany, Livonia, &c., who are occasionally visited by brethren, and strengthened in their religious convictions, while they have no external connexion with the Unity. These cannot be considered members of the society, though they maintain a spiritual connexion with it. The number of converts from heathen nations, as regularly reported at the last synod, in the year 1825, though larger than at any previous time, did not exceed 34,000 souls, comprehending all those who are in any way under the care of the missionaries. Indeed, it never was the object of the society to attempt the Christianization of whole nations or tribes, as such must be a mere nominal conversion. They profess to admit those only to the rite of baptism who give evidence of their faith by the change wrought in their life and conduct. On this account, they have every where introduced among their heathen converts a discipline similar to their own, as far as circumstances permit. It would be preposterous to conceive that the peculiar views, and the regulations of a society such as that of the United Brethren, could ever be adopted by any large body of men. They are exclusively calculated for small communities. Any one desirous of separating from the society meets with no hinderance. The following is a succinct view of the principal establishments of the society :-In the U. States, they have separate communities at Bethlehem, Nazareth and Litiz in Pennsylvania, and at Salem in North Carolina. Bethlehem is, next to the mother community at Herrnhut, in Germany, their largest establishment. Besides these, there are congregations at Newport in Rhode Island, at New York, at Philadelphia, Lancaster and Yorktown, at Graceham in Maryland; and several country congregations are scattered through Pennsylvania, the members of which chiefly dwell on their plantations, but have a common place of worship. There are four of this description in North Carolina, in the vicinity of Salem. In England, their chief settlements are Fulnec in Yorkshire, Fairfield in Lancashire, Ockbrook in Derbyshire: congregations exist likewise in London, Bedford, Bristol, Bath, Plymouth, Haverfordwest, together with a number of country congregations in divers villages. In Ireland, they have a considerable community at Gracehill, in the county of Antrim, and small congregations at Dublin, Gracefield and Ballinderry. On the continent of Europe,

have been about 262,000. The period of colonization was, one of great intellectual and political excitement in the mother country; in which a nation that had for a long time enjoyed free and popular institutions, was engaged in defending them against the encroachments of the crown, and in extending and securing them by new bulwarks. The principles of liberty, the rights of man, particularly of Englishmen, the nature, use and objects of government, were topics of general interest and discussion in England, and republican maxims were warmly embraced by many. It is an observation of Fox, "that from 1588 to 1640 was a period of almost uninterrupted tranquillity and peace: the general improvement in all the arts of civil life, and, above all, the astonishing progress of literature, are the most striking among the general features of that period, and are in themselves causes sufficient to produce effects of the utmost importance. A country whose language was enriched by the works of Hooker, Raleigh and Bacon, could not but experience a sensible change in its manners and in its style of thinking; and even to speak the same language in which Spenser and Shakspeare had written, seemed a sufficient plea to rescue the commons of England from the appellation of brutes, with which Henry VIII had addressed them." The same commons were, in fact, peevishly designated by James I as kings;* and such was the progress of the people of England in wealth, as well as in cultivation, that, according to Hume, the house of c commons, in 1628, was three times as rich as the house of lords. Another remarkable element in the society from which swarmed the American colonists, was the state of religion. An imperfect reformation, favored by the government, and amounting to little more than a secession from the Catholic church, was accompanied by a popular reformation, ready to follow out its principles to their results. The state religion derived its force and its rights from the crown; the church, therefore, became the champion of passive obedience and divine right, and the Puritans, as they were reproachfully called, or Non-conformists, were compelled to attack the temporal power, and to defend civil liberty, while assailing the intolerance of the church

* When informed of the approach of a committee of the house of commons, he ordered twelve chairs to be brought; "for," said he, "there are twelve kings a-coming."

and defending freedom of conscience. This mixture of religious faith in the contest for political rights, gave the English Puritans the zeal, firmness and boldness of religious reformers. (See Puritans.) It is further to be considered, that, while the English colonists brought with them to America the broadest and most generous principles of liberty, and those free institutions which convert general maxims into practical truths, and make them a part of the daily life of men, they left behind them those restraints which in some degree checked their free action in England. They brought the jury and the right of representation, but left behind them the chains which the church and court were endeavoring to fasten upon their countrymen: feudal services, privileged orders, corporations and guilds, with other similar burdens upon industry, and insults upon honest merit, found no place in the western forests; but civilization, arts and letters, without the corruption and gross licentiousness which characterized the reigns of James I and Charles II, were brought hither in the train of liberty. The next important element in the colonial history, is the political institutions established in the colonies. In 1606, two companies of merchants and others were incorporated, under the names of the London company and the Plymouth company, with the exclusive right of settling and trading within their respective limits. The former began the colonization of British America, in 1607, by sending to Virginia a feeble colony of 100 men, which, before the end of the year, was reduced, by suffering and the badness and scarcity of food, to thirty-eight. In October, 1609, the number had been increased by new colonists to 500: a famine reduced them in six months to sixty persons. In 1613, land was distributed to each individual, both the land and the produce having before been held in common. In 1619, the first colonial assembly was convoked, consisting of representatives elected by the boroughs, the concerns of the colony having been previously managed by the company in England. As the colonists were mostly adventure without families, ninety young girls were sent over by the company in 1620, and sold to the young planters, at the rate of 100-150 pounds of tobacco. In 1621, the company passed an ordinance vesting the government of the colony in a governor, council and general assembly, the latter chosen by the inhabitants, with power to enact laws.

In 1622, 347 men, women and children were massacred by the Indians; a general Indian war followed, and the settlements were reduced from eighty to eight. In 1624, the company was dissolved by the crown, and the colony taken into the hands of the king. Such are a few incidents from the humble annals of the first colonists, presenting a picture of suffering too often renewed in other parts of the country. The Plymouth company, to which was granted the exclusive right to trade and settle in North Virginia, did nothing effectual towards the colonization of their jurisdiction. But, in 1620, a number of Puritans (Brownists), who had set sail for Virginia, were landed, either by accident or treachery, within the limits of the Plymouth company. Ten years afterwards, they obtained from the company a grant of the land to which they had previously no title but occupancy; but they were never incorporated as a body politic by royal charter, and they therefore remained a mere voluntary association, yielding obedience to laws and magistrates formed and chosen by themselves, until their union with Massachusetts, in 1692.* But the germ of the New England colonies was the Massachusetts colony, settled, in 1628, by a company incorporated that year by royal charter, the land having been previously purchased from the Plymouth company. The government of the colony was transferred to Massachusetts, in 1630, by vote of the company; and, a few years later, the freemen adopted the plan of acting by delegates or representatives: courts were also established, and the charter of a trading company was thus tacitly converted into the constitution of a commonwealth. The Massachusetts colonists were Puritans, and were rendered not less obnoxious to the court party at home by their religious principles, than by this unwarranted assumption of political power. This, with other circumstances, led the Plymouth company to resign their charter to the king (1635), *As this instance of the formation of a society which actually exercised the power of life and death is, perhaps, unique in history, we have thought it worth while to give the document itself. "In the name of God-we, whose names are underwritten, do, solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic, by virtue hereof to enact, constitute and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions and offices, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony, unto which we promise all due subjection and obedience."

and Massachusetts, like Virginia, was thus taken into the royal hands. Such, however, was the disturbed state of England at the time, that these remote and insignificant colonies attracted little attention, and were therefore left to grow up in habits of self-government, with little restraint, while their numbers and wealth were increased by successive emigrations of the parties worsted in the civil strife at home. The persecuted Puritans fled to New England; the oppressed Catholics to Maryland; the defeated cavaliers or royalists to Virginia. Such were some of the events of the earliest periods of colonial history.-It would lead us beyond our limits to attempt even a sketch of the annals of the colonies. We must satisfy ourselves with a hasty view of the forms of government which prevailed in them, and which served as the elements of the political system established rather than introduced by the revolution. Of these forms of government there were three-the royal, the charter, and the proprietary governments. 1. The charter governments were confined to New England. The people of these colonies, by the express words of their charters, were entitled to the privileges of natural born subjects, and invested with the powers of government, legislative, executive and judicial. They chose their own governors, elected legislative assemblies, and established courts of justice, and in many points even exceeded the powers conferred by the charters. The only limitation to their legislative power was, that their laws should not be contrary to those of England. The crown claimed, indeed, the right of revoking these charters; but the colonists maintained that they were solemn compacts, irrevocable unless for cause. The charters were sometimes declared forfeited, or forcibly taken away (particularly towards the close of Charles II's reign, when the corporations in England shared the same fate); and the disputes to which this question gave rise, between the mother country and the charter colonies, were one of the causes of the revolution.-2. The royal governments were those of Virginia, New York, and, at a later period, the Carolinas (1728) and the Jerseys (1702). In these colonies, the governor and council were appointed by the crown, and the colonists chose representatives to the colonial assemblies. The governors were commissioned by the crown, and acted in obedience to instructions received from the same. They had