Toward the middle of the eighteenth century American carpenters and builders everywhere, Philadelphia included, were materially aided by the appearance of handy little ready reference books of directions for joinery containing measured drawings with excellent Georgian detail. Such publications became the fountainhead of Colonial design. They taught our local craftsmen the technique of building and the art of proportion; instilled in their minds an appreciation of classic motives and the desire to adapt the spirit of the Renaissance to their own needs and purposes. In those days some knowledge of architecture was considered essential to every gentleman's education, and with the aid of these builders' reference books many men in other professions throughout the country became amateur architects of no mean ability as a pastime. In and about Philadelphia their Georgian adaptations, often tempered to a degree by the Quaker preference for the simple and practical, contributed much to the charm and distinction of local architecture. To such amateur architects we owe Independence Hall, designed by Andrew Hamilton, speaker of the Pennsylvania Assembly, and Christ Church, designed mainly by Doctor John Kearsley. [Illustration: PLATE II. --Old Mermaid Inn, Mount Airy; Old Red Lion Inn.] [Illustration: PLATE III.--Camac Street, "The Street of Little Clubs"; Woodford, Northern Liberties, Fairmount Park. Erected by William Coleman in 1756.] During the whole of the eighteenth century Philadelphia was the most important city commercially, politically and socially in the American colonies. For this there were several reasons. Owing to its liberal government and its policy of religious toleration, Philadelphia and the outlying districts gradually became a refuge for European immigrants of various persecuted sects. Nowhere else in America was such a heterogeneous mixture of races and religions to be found. There were Swedes, Dutch, English, Germans, Welsh, Irish and Scotch-Irish; Quakers, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Catholics, Reformed Lutherans, Mennonites, Dunkers, Schwenkfelders and Moravians. Until the Seven Years' War between France and England from 1756 to 1763 the Quakers dominated the Pennsylvania government, and Quaker influence remained strong in Philadelphia long after it had given way to that of the more belligerent Scotch-Irish, mostly Presbyterians, in the rest of Pennsylvania, until the failure of the Whiskey Insurrection in 1794. This Scotch-Irish ascendancy was due not only to their increasing numbers, but to the increasing general dissatisfaction with the Quaker failure to provide for the defense of the province. The Penns lost their governmental rights in 1776 and three years later had their territorial rights vested in the commonwealth.