George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 4, 15th edition.

[38] the Board of Trade, and the dispatches which were

chap. II.} 1748. Nov.

constantly coming in, as fast as the crown officers in the colonies became aware of the change in the spirit of the administration, the affairs which he was to manage, seemed from the irresolution of his predecessors, to have become involved in universal confusion, tending to legislative independence and rebellion. ‘Here’ wrote Glen, the governor of South Carolina, ‘levelling principles prevail; the frame of the civil government is unhinged; a governor, if he would be idolized, must betray his trust;¹ the people have got the whole administration in their hands; the election of members to the assembly is by ballot; not civil posts only, but all ecclesiastical preferments, are in the disposal or election of the people; to preserve the dependence of America in general, the Constitution must be new modelled.’²

In North Carolina, no law for collecting quit-rents, had been perfected; and its frugal people, whom their governor reported as ‘wild and barbarous,’ paid the servants of the crown scantily, and often left them in arrears.³

In Virginia, the land of light taxes and freedom from paper money, long famed for its loyalty, where the people had nearly doubled in twenty-one years, and a revenue, granted in perpetuity, with a fixed quit-rent, put aside the usual sources of colonial strife, the insurgent spirit of freedom invaded the royal authority in the Established Church; and in 1748, just as Sherlock, the new bishop of London, was interceding with the king for an American episcopate,