19. The PRINTING-PRESS came also. In 1638 Stephen Daye, an English printer, arrived at Boston, and in the following year set up a press at Cambridge. The first American publication was an almanac for New England, bearing date of 1639. During the next year, Thomas Welde and John Eliot, two ministers of Roxbury, and Richard Mather, of Dorchester, translated the Hebrew Psalms into English verse. This was the first book printed in America. 20. New England was fast becoming a nation. Well-nigh fifty villages dotted the face of the country. Enterprises of all kinds were rife. Manufactures, commerce, and the arts were introduced. William Stephens, a shipbuilder of Boston, had already built and launched an American vessel of four hundred tons burden. Twenty-one thousand two hundred people had found a home between Plymouth Rock and the Connecticut. [Sidenote: =The Union of the Colonies.=] 21. Circumstances suggested a union of the colonies. The western frontier was exposed to the hostilities of the Dutch on the Hudson. Similar trouble was apprehended from the French on the north. Indian tribes capable of mustering a thousand warriors were likely at any hour to fall upon the helpless villages. Common interests made a union indispensable. 22. The first effort to consolidate the colonies was ineffectual. But in 1643, a plan of union was adopted, by which Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven were joined in a confederacy, called THE UNITED COLONIES OF NEW ENGLAND. The chief authority was conferred upon an assembly composed of two representatives from each colony. These delegates were chosen annually at an election where all the freemen voted by ballot. There was no president other than the speaker of the assembly. Provision was made for the admission of other colonies into the union, but none were ever admitted. 23. At a meeting of the assembly in December, 1641, Nathaniel Ward brought forward a written instrument, which was adopted as the constitution of the State. This statute was called the BODY OF LIBERTIES, and was ever afterward esteemed as the great charter of colonial freedom. [Sidenote: =Persecution of the Quakers.=] 24. In July of 1656 the QUAKERS began to arrive at Boston. The first who came were Ann Austin and Mary Fisher. They were caught and searched for marks of witchcraft, and then thrown into prison. After several weeks' confinement they were brought forth and banished. Before the end of the year, eight others were arrested and sent back to England. A law was passed that Quakers who persisted in coming to Massachusetts should have their ears cut off and their tongues bored through with a red-hot iron. In 1657 the assembly of the four colonies convened, and the penalty of death was passed against the Quakers as disturbers of the public peace. [Sidenote: =Trade Restrictions.=]