We have to realise that the actual government was very much in the hands of the king at this date. Then, as now, it was nominally the Parliament that governed. The Cabinet, in fact, does most of the business to-day. Under George III. it was George III. that governed, because the Parliament was full of "the king's friends," as they were called--members whom affection or bribery or some other form of interest influenced so that they could be relied on to support any measures which the king wished to be carried. The population and the wealth of the British colonies in America had grown very rapidly. At the beginning of George III.'s reign the colonists are said to have numbered nearly a million and a half, which was then just about a fourth of the population of the mother country. And there was already half a million of slaves in the South. {138} The slaves were already creating a difference between the South and the North, or, shall we say, were emphasising and widening the difference created by the different type of colonist by which the two districts were populated. For Virginia and the other southern States had been occupied largely by emigrants from the West of England and by aristocratic families, and with the slaves to work for them they tended to divide up the country into large estates; whereas in the North, whither the emigrants had come from a lower social stratum at home, and where they had no slaves to work for them, the holdings were small. In religion the Virginians were mainly of the Established English Church. In Maryland, the inhabitants were chiefly Roman Catholic. In New England, Puritans were in a large majority; and in Pennsylvania, the State of William Penn, the people were largely Quakers. It was for the sake of religion that most of them, or their forbears, had left their native land. And just because the religions were so many and various, it was impossible that there could be any established Church among them in the land of their adoption. Men were free to serve God according to the dictates of their consciences. Each State was governed by an Assembly elected by its own people and by a Governor appointed by the Crown. The States had their "charters"--documents in which were drawn up their rights and their duties--and so long as they acted within the provisions of those characters the Governor had no right or reason to interfere. The right of taxing themselves for the purpose of administering their own affairs was given them. The home Government derived a revenue from the colonies by the duties charged on articles which they imported by sea. And the colonies were obliged {139} by their charters to engage in no trade overseas except with the home country.