Such in brief were the towns, industries, and style of living of the southern and middle colonists. The English-born planter depended upon slave labour or indentured servants; he lived upon a large estate in a magnificent and often too lavish manner. But they were men of as much grit as the New Englanders; certainly they were descended from a different stock, and they looked upon the present life and the future with very different eyes, but that was all. The settlers of the middle colonies plunged with readiness into the intricacies of trade, and the merchant and tradesman were far more conspicuous figures in daily life than in either Virginia or Maryland. The colonists were, too, far more cosmopolitan than in the north. In the Carolinas there were a few Huguenots, Swiss, and German Palatines, but in Virginia and Maryland there was little trace of any foreign element. But in the middle colonies there were regular waves of aliens from Germany and Switzerland intermixed with the earlier Dutch and English settlers. They all helped to play their little parts in the world's history, and they all came to look upon England as the home country. Then by the middle of the eighteenth century they were called upon to resist the aggressions of France; and during those years of struggle they partly learnt their power. United at last, English settler and foreigner, Northern Puritan and Southern planter, they made the one supreme effort, throwing off the yoke of England, and became no longer colonists, but Americans. FOOTNOTES: [228] So lucrative did the slave trade become that, even after the Abolition Act of 1807, slave dealers realised an enormous profit if one ship out of three with its living cargo reached an American port. [229] New Jersey Historical Society, _Proceedings_ (1850), iv. p. 118. [230] Morley, Walpole, _Twelve English Statesmen_ (1896), p. 168. [231] _A Declaration of the Present State of Virginia_, etc. [232] Doyle, _The English in America, Virginia, etc._ (1882), p. 525. [233] See p. 46. [234] Lawson, p. 3. [235] Quoted by Thwaites, _op. cit._, p. 221. [236] Doyle, _Colonies under the House of Hanover_ (1907), p. 289. [237] Meade, _Old Churches of Virginia_ (1861), i. p. 385. [238] Doyle, _The Colonies under the House of Hanover_ (1907), pp. 42-43. CHAPTER X THE FRENCH COLONIES IN NORTH AMERICA