of this colony in 1661, gave thanks to heaven that there was not a printing office in any of the Southern provinces. What improvement in literature could be expected among a people who were thus distracted by faction, destitute of books, and denied the use of the press? Notwithstanding all these discouragements and disadvantages, however, the literature of the colony evidently advanced. The public papers of that period are written in a conspicuous, nervous style, corresponding in force of expression, purity of language and perspicuity of arrangement, with similar writings in the reigns of Charles II., King William, and Queen Anne. The intelligence of the common people and the ability and learning of the men who managed the affairs of the colony in that period are matters of surprise and astonishment to any one acquainted with the disadvantages under which the colony labored. The Assembly and the courts of justice sat in private houses; the acts passed by the Assembly were not printed; they were read aloud to the people at the first court after they were passed; they were in force for only two years, and every biennial Assembly was under the necessity of reenacting all that were thought useful. There was no printing press in the colony before the year 1746, at which time the condition of the statute-book required a revisal, and the public interest called aloud for the printing of it. The learning and literature of the colony were confined to the lawyers and ministers of the gospel, most of whom were educated in England; and it was owing to this circumstance chiefly that the literature of the colony advanced so steadily with that of the mother-country. The legislation of the colony began to assume form and system in the reign of Queen Anne; and in the year after her death, 1715, the Assembly passed sixty-six acts, most of which had been frequently reenacted before. Many of those acts remain in force to this day, and are monuments of the political wisdom and legal learning of that time. In style and composition they are equal to any part of our statute-book; they are the first statutes of the colony that have come down to our time.