The greatest importance, however, attaches to the settlement of the Jews in the New World. While in the Spanish colonies there was not only no religious liberty but even persecutions of Marranos culminating in autos-da-fe, as in the mother country, the conquest of Brazil by the Dutch in 1624 resulted in the first organized Jewish community on the American continent. The loss of Brazil in 1654 forced the Jews to emigrate, and some settled in the Dutch and British possessions in Central and South America, Surinam, Curacoa and Jamaica. But the most important settlement was that of New York in 1654. The intolerance of the Dutch, governor Stuyvesant drove some of the newcomers to Newport, R. I. (1657), where Roger Williams had proclaimed full religious liberty. In 1733 some Portuguese Jews from England availed themselves of the opportunity created by James Oglethorpe, who made Georgia an asylum for convicts who were willing to reform. They sent some of their poor to Savannah. As the governor was unfavorable to the settlement of the Jews, fearing that their presence would prejudice the success of the colony, some Jews went to South Carolina, for which the philosopher John Locke had drafted a liberal constitution (1697). He expressly declared equal rights for non-Christians. They formed a congregation at Charleston in 1750, for a long time the most flourishing Jewish settlement in the territory now comprised in the United States. Yet up to the end of the eighteenth century only six Jewish communities are known: New York, Newport, R. I., Savannah, Ga., Charleston, S. C., Philadelphia, and Lancaster, Pa. These Jews took part in the American Revolution, and their patriotism was expressly recognized in the reply of George Washington to their addresses of congratulation when he was elected President. An English law of 1740 gave to the Jews in the American colonies full rights of naturalization, also extended to Canada when it became a British possession. The growth of Jewish population was slow and did not begin until the reactionary governments of Europe, after the July revolution of 1830, made the hope of any improvement appear vain. Thus, since 1830 large streams of Jewish immigrants have settled all over the United States. Another far stronger current of immigration began in consequence of the persecutions in Russia in 1881. The Jewish population of America may now accordingly be figured at 2,000,000 souls. In Spanish America the only settlement of any consequence is in Argentine. INTELLECTUAL AND LITERARY LIFE