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Rh MASSACHUSETTS 615 of Boston from the extensive provision of extra copies for its ten popular departments. largely counterparts of each other. It is accordingly probable that the library of Harvard University (nearly 300,000 volumes), which has but few duplicates, outranks all others in the country in the count of titles, as it is much the largest of all American academic collections. Of the eight largest libraries in the United States, three are in Massachusetts, the Boston Athenaeum, one of the best of the class of proprietary libraries, being counted with the two already named. The State led in the founding ol city and town libraries, supported by public taxes, thirty years ago, and has instituted more of them than exist in all the other States com bined. After the one at Boston, that at AVorcester is the best-known. Collections of fair proportions are attached to the lesser colleges, Amherst, Williams, and Wellesley. The special historical libraries of the American Antiquarian Society at Worcester, the Massa chusetts Historical Society, the New England Historic Genealogical Society, and Congregational Library, at Boston, added to the depart ments of the Harvard and Boston libraries, make Massachusetts exceedingly rich in books upon American history. No one of her libraries has the resources of the rarest of early Americana which will be found in the private collection of the late John Carter-Brown at Providence, and in the Lenox library at New York ; but, with access to such private collections as that of Charles Deane at Cam bridge, the student of American history is probably at less disad vantage in Massachusetts than in any other library centre in the States, though the value of the Peter Force collection in the library of Congress is not to be forgotten. In science, sections of the Boston public library and the Harvard library are of the most importance, though in physics and natural history the collections of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Boston) and of the Boston Society of Natural History may well supplement them. In private libraries the State may claim numbers, rather than indivi dual richness, and is probably surpassed by New York in signal collections. The State itself, in the State House, has a collection of considerable value, confined for the most part to law, public documents, and American history. Crime. A board of prison commissioners (three men and two women) report in 18SO 3821 persons in confinement, 2070 in county prisons, and 1751 in other institutions. In 1879 there were 16, 21 1 sentences for drunkenness ; and during the last twenty years 60 per cent, of all sentences for crime were traceable to liquor, or 340,814, in that time, out of 578,458 sentences. Of this aggregate, 332,495 were against chastity, morality, and decency; 55,327 against property ; and 1656 (felonious) and 81,440 (not felonious) against persons. Seventy-five per cent, of criminals are between the ages of eighteen and forty-five. Fires and Insurance. The fires in 1880 were 1722 in number (of which 596 were total), causing an aggregate loss of $4,454,221, of which 71 per cent, was paid by insurance companies. The causes were in 383 cases reported unknown, and in 294 incendiary. In life insurance, six Massachusetts companies have gross assets of $32,939,505 and gross liabilities of $27-,546,554 ; while com panies organized without the State and doing business within it have $309,996,657 assets and $328,105,152 liabilities. Government, Militia, &amp;lt;tc. The State, under the federal constitu tion, sends two senators to the Congress of the United States, and the most eminent men who have thus represented the common wealth, have been John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, Rufus Choate, Edward Evereil, and Charles Sumner. The State is also en titled to twelve members of the National House of Representatives. The executive department of the State Government is confided to a governor, who is aided by a lieutenant-governor, and eight others, representing so many divisions of the State, who, with the governor and lieutenant-governor, constitute the executive council. They are chosen yearly. There are also a secretary of the commonwealth, a treasurer, and auditor. An attorney-general is the State s law officer. The governor, as commander-i-n-chief of the State militia, has a military staff. The judges are all appointed by the governor, with the advice and consent of his council, and hold office during good behaviour. The highest court is the supreme judicial court, which has a chief justice and six associate justices. Among the eminent jurists who have been at the head of this court are John Adams, Theophilus Parsons, aud Lemuel Shaw. A superior court, with a chief justice and ten associate justices, was established in 1859. Each county has its own courts of probate and insolvency. Various larger cities and towns have police and municipal courts ; while groups of towns have district courts. The legislative departments are the senate, of forty members, chosen by senatorial districts ; and a house of representatives, of two hundred and forty members, chosen by districts within the counties. These two bodies form the general court so-called, which is chosen yearly, and it elects its own officers. It meets in the State House, at Boston, a structure prominently placed on the highest point of land in that city, its dome serving as an apex to the elevation of its sky-line. It was built in 1795-97, but has been enlarged since. Before it are statues of Daniel Webster, by Powers, and Horace Mann, by Miss Stebbins, and within are Chantrey s toga- draped statue of Washington (placed there in 1828), and Thomas Ball s statue of John A. Andrew, the latter the most eminent of the recent governors, -whose term of service covered the period of the civil war (1861-65), and who acquired the sobriquet of the great war governor. &quot; Of the incumbents of the twelve principal offices of the Federal Government, this State has furnished, since the organization under the constitution, 34, a number exceeded by Virginia (40), Penn sylvania (36), and New York (35). The enrolled militia (every able-bodied male between eighteen and forty-five years of age in 1880) were 238,762 in number, the active volunteer militia numbering 334 officers and 4436 enlisted men, organized in two brigades, besides two unattached corps of cadets, one the governor s bodyguard. _History. It is possible that the coasts of Massachusetts were visited by the Northmen, and by the earliest navigators who followed Cabot, but the evidence is that of conjecture only. Gosnold left the earliest trace of English acquaintance on its shores, when he discovered and named Cape Cod in 1602. Pring and Champlain later tracked them, but the map of Cham plain is hardly recognizable. The first sufficient explorations for cartographical record were made by John Smith in 1614, and his map was long the basis particularly in its nomenclature of later maps. Per manency of occupation, however, dates from the voyage of the &quot;May flower,&quot; which brought about a hundred men, women, and children, who had mostly belonged to an English sect of Separatists, originating in Yorkshire, but who had passed a period of exile for religion s sake in Holland. In the early winter of 1620 they made the coast of Cape Cod ; they had intended to make their landfall farther south, within the jurisdiction of the Virginia Company, which had granted them a patent ; but stress of weather prevented their doing so. Finding themselves without warrant in a region beyond their patent, they drew up and signed, before landing, a compact of government, which is accounted the earliest written con stitution in history, After some exploration of the coast they made a permanent landing, December 21, 1620 (new style), at Plymouth, a harbour which had already been so named on Smith s map in 1616. A subsequent patent from the council for New England, upon whose territory they were, confirmed to them a tract of land which at present corresponds to the south-east section of the State. They maintained their existence as a colony, though never having a charter direct from the crown, till 1691, when, under what is termed the Provincial Charter, Plymouth colony was annexed to Massachusetts. The Massachusetts Company had been formed in England in 1628 for the purpose of promoting settlements in New England. There had been various minor expeditions, during the few years since Smith was on the coast, before this company, in the Puritan interests, had sent over, in 1628, John Endicott, with a party, to what is now Salem. In 1630 the government of the company, with questionable right, transferred itself to their territory, and under the lead of John Winthrop laid the foundations anew of the Massachusetts colony, when they first settled Boston in the autumn of that year. Winthrop remained the governor of the colony, with some interruptions, till his death in 1649, his first rejection coming from a party of theologi cal revolt which chose Henry Vane (later Sir Henry Vane) to the office. The early history was rendered unquiet at times by wars with the Indians, the chief of which were the Pequot War in 1637, aud Philip s War in 1675-76 ; and for better combining against these enemies, Massachusetts, with Connecticut, New Haven, and New Plymouth, formed a confederacy in 1643, considered the prototype of the larger union of the colonies which conducted the War of the Revolution (1775-82). The struggle with the crown, which ended in independence, began at the foundation of the colony, with assumptions of power under the charter, which the colonial government was always trying to maintain, and the crown was as assiduously endeavouring to counteract. Theological variances and differences of political views led to some emigration of the early colonists to Rhode Island. To secure &quot;more room&quot; led others to go to Connecticut, where they established a bulwark against the Dutch of New York. An inroad of the Quakers disturbed their peace for several years, and led to violent laws against all such aggressive dissentients. After more than a half century of struggle, the crown finally annulled the charter of the colony in 1685, and after a brief temporary sway of Joseph Dudley, a native of the colony, as president of a provisional council, Sir Edmund Andros was sent over with a commission to unite New York and New England under his rule. His government was espoused by a small church party, but was intensely unpopular with the bulk of the people ; and, before news arrived of the landing of William of Orange in England, the citizens of Boston rose in revolution (1689), deposed Andros, imprisoned him, and re-established their old colonial form of government. Then came a struggle, carried on in England by Increase Mather as agent of the colony, to secure such a form of government, under a new charter, as would preserve as many as possible of their old liberties. Plymouth colony, acting