of the most pious and excellent of her sons. any communion would have been a saint."

Fletcher in

At the Conference of 1766 an imperfect attempt was made to ascertain the number of members; but not until the Conference of 1767 was the task accomplished. It then appeared that there were 22,410 members in the English societies, 2801 in the Irish, 468 in the Scotch, and 232 in the Welsh.

CHAPTER V.

IN THE NEW WORLD.

As in nature, the soil, the climate, and the culture, no less than the germ, control the growth of every species, so in the formation of civil and ecclesiastical institutions the characteristics, number, and spirit of a people influence development as powerfully as does the initial principle or impulse.

In September, 1739, the natal year of Methodism, George Whitefield arrived in Philadelphia, and during the succeeding year and a half produced the profoundest religious impression, laying the foundations of numerous religious organizations. The influence of Whitefield can be explained in part by the fact that, ten years after this marvelous visit to Philadelphia, that city contained only 2076 houses. Allowing an average of five persons to a family -a large estimate-such was the power of his voice that when he preached in the open air he could easily have commanded the entire adult population.

The first Protestant church in the city of Baltimore was erected during the year 1739. At this time the colony of Pennsylvania had a population of less than 50,000; Virginia not far from 70,000; New Jersey a little over 50,000, of whom nearly one tenth were slaves; and the province of New York is estimated at 65,000, with an annual rate of increase of a thousand. The settlement and development of the country progressed irregularly, being stimulated or retarded by local circumstances and political and pecuniary complications in England.

In 1750 a census of New England showed 340,000, and of South Carolina, 64,000. The methods of disseminating intelligence throughout the country were chiefly by the few and slow mails, by special messenger, and by conversation. The first newspaper in Connecticut was established at New Haven in 1755, and the first in North Carolina was published in December of the same year. As late as 1757 the city of New York had but 12,000 inhabitants, and Philadelphia only 1000 more. Delaware had no newspaper until 1761; the city of Providence, R. I., none until 1762. The "Georgia Gazette," the first started in that colony, and the only one for more than twelve years, issued its first number at Savannah in 1763.

In 1764 many German and French Protestants and also English and Scotch, stimulated by bounties in land offered by the legislature, migrated to South Carolina. The same year Pittsburg, Pa., was laid out, and its settlement commenced.

This epitome of the history of the country for the first six years of the seventh decade of the eighteenth century suggests the conditions found by a company of Irish Palatines who sailed from Limerick to the city of New York in 1760. A writer in the "Irish Evangelist," one hundred years later, in an animated and pathetic manner describes their departure.1 The chief figure is a young man of thoughtful look and resolute bearing, evidently the leader of the party. "He had been one of the first-fruits to Christ among his countrymen, had been the class-leader of their infant Church, and often in their humble chapel had ministered to them the Word of life. . . . His name was Philip Embury. His party consisted of his wife, Mary Switzer, to whom he was married in Rathkeale Church, on the 27th of November, 1758; two of his brothers and their 1 Stevens's "History of the Methodist Episcopal Church,” vol. i., pp. 51, 52.