The Southern Colonies were quite different from those of the North. In place of thickly-settled towns there were large plantations with African villages near the house of the owner. The proprietor was a sort of country squire, living in considerable comfort for those days. He fed and clothed everybody, black or white, who lived on the estate, and waited patiently for the colored people to do his work and keep well, so that they would be more valuable. The colored people were blessed with children at a great rate, so that at this writing, though voteless, they send a large number of members to Congress. This cheers the Southern heart and partially recoups him for his chickens. (See Appendix.) The South then, as now, cured immense quantities of tobacco, while the North tried to cure those who used it. Washington was a Virginian. He packed his own flour with his own hands, and it was never inspected. People who knew him said that the only man who ever tried to inspect Washington's flour was buried under a hill of choice watermelons at Mount Vernon. Along the James and Rappahannock the vast estates often passed from father to son according to the law of entail, and such a thing as a poor man "prior to the war" must have been unknown. [Illustration: NOT RICH BEFORE THE WAR.] Education, however, flourished more at the North, owing partly to the fact that the people lived more in communities. Governor Berkeley of Virginia was opposed to free schools from the start, and said, "I thank God there are no free schools nor printing-presses here, and I hope we shall not have them these hundred years." His prayer has been answered. CHAPTER XIV. THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR. William Pitt was partly to blame for the Revolutionary War. He claimed that the Colonists ought not to manufacture so much as a horseshoe nail except by permission of Parliament. It was already hard enough to be a colonist, without the privilege of expressing one's self even to an Indian without being fined. But when we pause to think that England seemed to demand that the colonist should take the long wet walk to Liverpool during a busy season of the year to get his horse shod, we say at once that P. Henry was right when he exclaimed that the war was inevitable and moved that permission be granted for it to come. Then came the Stamp Act, making almost everything illegal that was not written on stamp paper furnished by the maternal country. John Adams, Patrick Henry, and John Otis made speeches regarding the situation. Bells were tolled, and fasting and prayer marked the first of November, the day for the law to go into effect. These things alarmed England for the time, and the Stamp Act was repealed; but the king, who had been pretty free with his money and had entertained a good deal, began to look out for a chance to tax the Colonists, and ordered his Exchequer Board to attend to it.