y, 33, 208.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] In recent years Georgia has been one of the first states to abandon
this bad practice.

[2] I suppose it was this same Mason Weems that was afterward known in
Virginia as Parson Weems, of Pohick parish, near Mount Vernon. See
_Magazine of American History_, iii. 465-472; v. 85-90. At first an
eccentric preacher, Parson Weems became an itinerant violin-player and
book-peddler, and author of that edifying work, _The Life of George
Washington, with Curious Anecdotes equally Honourable to Himself and
Exemplary to his Young Countrymen_. On the title-page the author
describes himself as "formerly rector of Mount Vernon Parish,"--which
Bishop Meade calls preposterous. The book is a farrago of absurdities,
reminding one, alike in its text and its illustrations, of an overgrown
English chap-book of the olden time. It has had an enormous sale, and
has very likely contributed more than any other single book toward
forming the popular notion of Washington. It seems to have been this
fiddling parson that first gave currency to the everlasting story of the
cherry-tree and the little hatchet.

[3] _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_, iii. 447.

[4] A very interesting account of these troubles may be found in the
first volume of Professor McMaster's _History of the People of the
United States_.

[5] This subject has been treated in a masterly manner by Mr. H.B.
Adams, in an essay on Maryland's Influence upon Land Cessions to the
United States, published in the Third Series of the admirable _Johns
Hopkins University Studies in History and Politics_. I am indebted to
Mr. Adams for many valuable suggestions.

[6] It would be in the highest degree erroneous, however, to suppose
that the Constitution of the United States is not, as much as any other,
an instance of evolution from precedents. See, in this connection, the
very able article by Prof. Alexander Johnston, _New Princeton Review_,
Sept., 1887, pp. 175-190.

[7] The slave-population of the United States, according to the census
of 1700, was thus distributed among the states:--

_North._

New Hampshire 158
Vermont 17
Massachusetts --
Rhode Island 952
Connecticut 2,759
New York 21,324
New Jersey 11,423
Pennsylvania 3,737
------
40,370

_South._

Delaware 8,887
Maryland 103,036
Vi