Excerpt from Life in the Eighteenth Century: A Little History of Colonial Life The social and political institutions of every country are the outgrowths of that country's life conditions, except in so far as institutions may be imposed upon a people by an authority outside of themselves. In our country outside authority has never been able thus to impress itself upon the minds and lives of the people. The development of American institutions, American ideas, and American life, has been exclusively from within. Our system, from top to bottom, is the creation of the people who live under it. It is therefore peculiarly well adapted to their needs, and peculiarly an expression of their common thought and aspiration. The men and women who founded the English colonies in America, and the men and women who built those colonies up into great, self-governing commonwealths, were from the beginning men and women in revolt against the life conditions into which they were born. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.