country as perhaps never before, the well-rounded periods of the address of Shulze, fresh from a practically unanimous election, fell upon the ears of the people with peculiar appropriateness.

He had claimed that more money had been spent on internal improvements in Pennsylvania than on any other section of equal size in the country. As the State could borrow at four and a half and five per cent., the Legislature decided that still greater liberality would add to the prosperity. The millions that they voted unquestionably stimulated industry and developed the country, but they injured credit. People began to ask whether there was any limit to the willingness of the people to load down the State with debt, and whether the stimulation would not need to be continuous to satisfy the masses now in supreme control, who reaped the fruits and paid but little of the taxes. Moreover, the commissioners had over-spent their appropriations, and temporary loans were made. In the face of these questionings and makeshifts the credit of the State visibly declined, and difficulty was found in making new loans on good terms.

A great improvement, however, resulted. Politics was predominant in the management, and not all the money was wisely expended. Poor work was done, and much of it had to be done over, but the conception was a great one, and vast benefits resulted. The idea was to make a canal along the Alleghany and Conemaugh Rivers from Pittsburg to Johnstown, a distance of one hundred and four miles. Here the boats were to be unloaded or carried bodily over the Alleghany Mountains on a railroad up and down a series of inclined planes with levels between. Another canal would then carry them down the Juniata and Susquehanna to Columbia, whence a railroad would bear their freight across the fertile lands of Lancaster and Chester Counties to Philadelphia. Another canal was to connect Pittsburg with Lake Erie; both branches of the Susquehanna were to be utilized in the same way, and another would bring the coal and lumber of the Lehigh country

from Easton to tide-water at Bristol. Boats were already passing from the Susquehanna to the Schuylkill.

By the end of 1830 the canal from Pittsburg to Johnstown was completed. The Portage Railroad was begun the following year. There were five planes on each slope, with an aggregate elevation of about two thousand feet. At the head of each slope was a stationary engine, which drew up or let down cars by an endless wire rope. The railroad was open for public travel in 1835 as a State enterprise, each customer being permitted at first to supply his own motive power.

The water communication from the Alleghanies to Columbia was also nearly completed in 1830, and the railroad to Philadelphia, operated by horses, was also in partial use.

If, therefore, the State debt was mounting up, and contractors and politicians were enriching themselves, a great public improvement, a system of canals, aggregating about four hundred and thirty miles in length, was about completed by the close of Governor Shulze's administration. Besides these, three hundred miles of canals were owned by corporations. Six and a half million dollars had been expended by the State and three more were necessary for completion, but the Western trade was partly secured; more important still, the State was developed, and coal came from Mauch Chunk to Philadelphia by water (first in 1839) and sold for six dollars and fifty cents per ton, to the manifest advantage of the manufacturers of the great city.

Thus Pennsylvania entered upon her career of industrial development. Except a few importers in Philadelphia, all her citizens were practically unanimous for protection. Again and again did her Legislature pledge the State to its support. Under its fostering care manufactures sprung up, great in variety and value. Coal and iron she had in abundance, means of transportation by the liberality of the State were no longer lacking, foreign competition was cut off by restrictive duties. She needed the railroad system to complete the perfect machinery of trade; she needed a system of general education to insure the intelligence of all

of her citizens. The dawn of both was quite visible, and their brighter day was rapidly to advance.

They were not, however, questions on which parties would divide. A subject involving more trenchant partisanship now came into the political world,-a subject the significance of which the earlier statesmen never imagined, and the later have almost forgotten. It was the product of the intense patriotism of the times and the boldness which led men to attack whatever seemed a moral evil threatening the State. Nowhere was the battle more strenuously fought than in Pennsylvania.

CHAPTER XVIII.

1829-1837.

Antimasonry-Wolf and Ritner-The National Bank and Nicholas Biddle-Andrew Jackson and Pennsylvania-Governor Wolf, Thaddeus Stevens, and Public Schools.

THE antimasonic movement owes its origin to William Morgan, a mechanic of Batavia, New York, who announced in 1826 his intention to publish a book narrating the secrets of freemasonry. His fellow-Masons had him arrested and his house searched, without success, for the manuscript. They burned the printing-house where the book was supposed to be in process of manufacture, and finally seized the prisoner and abducted him. What happened to him after this was not at the time certainly known, but it was believed he had been murdered. In the local excitement which followed, while numerous arraignments were made, and public opinion unmistakably pointed out the abductors, difficulties seemed continually to rise up before the prosecution, and but few convictions followed. There grew up a belief that judges, juries, and witnesses, if Masons themselves, would shield a fellow from just punishment, and that the abduction and murder of Morgan were parts of a deliberately-planned plot, which declared the policy of the whole Masonic body towards any one who revealed the secrets of the order.

Interest in the matter spread over the country. The methods and objects of secret societies, of which the Masonic order was the prominent representative, underwent close scrutiny. Information as to oaths taken and the internal machinery were widely spread, and among many people the belief prevailed that these were inimical to sound judicial procedure and democratic government. They were investigated by committees of legislatures. Many lodges gave up

their charters, and their members felt at least partially absolved from their oaths. The difficulty of securing full and official information added to the suspicion of unseen dangers. Men did not know which of the political efforts of the day were due to a secret oath-bound organization, or to what efforts inconsistent with liberty the occult powers of this organization might be turned. The primary allegiance to the order and the danger of an imperial power within the State were much dwelt upon. The oaths requiring information of danger and assistance in distress were said to apply to criminals, and the belief prevailed that a Mason could hardly be convicted in court. Contrary asseverations were held to be a part of a Jesuitical system, which permitted falsehood in the interests of the order. The silence of the press was declared to be due to Masonic editors, and the Antimasons proceeded to establish a press of their own. Sanguinary penalties more to be feared than State punishments were asserted to be a part of the secret proceedings, and to crown all, the alleged deistical tendencies of certain formulæ were destructive to Christianity.

An intense and wide-spread feeling, fanned by such statements and vouched for by men of the highest character and attainments, soon took a political form, especially in the States of Vermont, Massachusetts. New York, and Pennsylvania. In Pennsylvania it first seriously asserted itself in the gubernatorial election of 1829.

The Democrats had placed in nomination, George Wolf, of Northampton County. He had been a member of the State Legislature, had served two terms in Congress, and was now fifty-two years old, and, like Snyder, Hiester, and Schulze, was the son of a German immigrant. The importance of the German voters is indicated by the line of German governors stretching, with the exception of one term, from 1808 to 1838. Through many of these years the candidates of both parties were of this parentage.

The general impression was that Wolf would be practically unopposed. Against him there was known to be a heterogeneous opposition, which was to vote for Joseph