The clergy, though belonging to an establishment, were poorly paid, and not revered as a class. They held the same position of inferiority in respect to the rich planters which the clergy of England held in respect to the country gentry at the same period. Being appointed by the crown, they were selected without much regard to fitness, and they were demoralized by want of supervision, for there were no resident bishops, and, further, by the uncertain character of their incomes, which, being paid in tobacco, were subject to great fluctuations. A few were men of learning and virtue who performed their duties faithfully, and eked out their incomes by taking pupils. “It was these few,” remarks Mr. Parton, “who saved civilization in the colony.” A few others became cultivators of tobacco, and acquired wealth. But the greater part of the clergy were companions and hangers-on of the rich planters,—examples of that type which Thackeray so well describes in the character of Parson Sampson in “The Virginians.” Strange tales were told of these old Virginia parsons. One is spoken of as pocketing annually a hundred dollars, the revenue of a legacy for preaching four sermons a year against atheism, gambling, racing, and swearing,—for all of which vices, except the first, he was notorious. This period, the middle half of the eighteenth century, was, as the reader need not be reminded, that in which the English church sank to its lowest point. It was the era when the typical country parson was a convivial fox-hunter; when the Fellows of colleges sat over their wine from four o’clock, their dinner hour, till midnight or after; when the highest type of bishop was a learned man who spent more time in his private studies than in the duties of his office; when the cathedrals were neglected and dirty, and the parish churches were closed from Sunday to Sunday. In England, the reaction produced Methodism, and, later, the Tractarian movement; and we are told that even in Virginia, “swarms of Methodists, Moravians, and New-Light Presbyterians came over the border from Pennsylvania, and pervaded the colony.” Taxation pressed with very unequal force upon the poor, and the right of voting was confined to freeholders. There was no system of public schools, and the great mass of the people were ignorant and coarse, but morally and physically sound,—a good substructure for an aristocratic society. Wealth being concentrated mainly in the hands of a few, Virginia presented striking contrasts of luxury and destitution, whereas in the neighboring colony of Pennsylvania, where wealth was more distributed and society more democratic, thrift and prosperity were far more common.