Any historical student should examine Rhode Island for what it is, and even more for what it is not. Roger Williams and his fellows tried a “lively experiment” as daring as it was fruitful. They severed church and state, cutting off thereby the help of an educated clergy. They founded a political democracy, tempering it with the best aristocracy to be obtained, without the ordinary facilities of education derived through such help. Neither the Williams Independents nor the Quakers followed the common formulas of education, which were generally in the hands of Anglicans or Presbyterians. This does not prove that societies can safely drop scholastic education. Many communities have failed for lack of such education. It does prove that the Anglo-American stock engaged in political and economical development will educate itself. At first sight, it was hardly to be expected that isolated and unlettered Providence would be prominent in resisting England, or in forming a new government. But she did this, in full share, and the embodiment of her citizenship, the type of her republican character, was in one man, Stephen Hopkins--“great not only in capacity and force of mind, but also--what is much rarer--in originative faculty.” Born a farmer in 1707, removing to Providence in 1731, a member of the General Assembly in 1732, Chief Justice in 1739, one of the committee to form Franklin’s plan of colonial union at Albany in 1754, a signer of the Declaration in 1776--we have here the full measure of a republican citizen, whether by the standard of Cato, or by the later models of Franklin and Washington. “A clear and convincing speaker, he used his influence in Congress in favor of decisive measures.” [Illustration: Step. Hopkins FROM “APPLETONS’ CYCLO. OF AM. BIOG.” COPYRIGHT, 1887, BY D. APPLETON & CO.] In 1758 the first postmaster was appointed by Dr. Franklin. The State House on North Main Street was erected in 1759; the Fire Department began in 1763; a “vigorous effort” was made for free schools in 1767. A great change was wrought about 1763 by the opening of Westminster Street. A town named for Mr. Fox’s political district had been projected on the west side. It was strangled by the influence of the southern counties. Finally the way across the marsh was laid out. As late as 1771, there were only four houses on the southern and one on the northern side of Westminster Street. Joseph and William Russell, Clark and Nightingale, with James Brown, the father of the four brothers mentioned below, were among the prominent merchants before the Revolution.