six weeks. By the time letters went to and fro, the sick had died or recov-
ered, attacks had succeeded or been repulsed, couples had been married or
separated; in short, whatever was described in a letter had probably long
since changed.
And mail was not cheap. Even after Benjamin Franklin, as “co-deputy
postmaster general” for the colonies from 1753 on, had much improved the
post roads, made service more frequent, and persuaded Parliament to
reduce the charges, letters mailed in 1765 cost fourpence sterling for the
first 60 miles, sixpence for 100 miles, eightpence for 200 miles, and eight-
pence for each additional 100 miles. To note the cost of mail, however, tells
us little unless we relate the figures to prices and income: a soldier in the
British army at that time was expected to support himself and his family
on less than sixpence a day; a civilian worker earned perhaps twice that
amount. Urban Americans, on average, earned more but paid more for
food. A loaf of bread in New York City cost about twopence a pound.
It was expensive to keep in touch. Even if people in, say, Boston and
Charles Town (later Charleston), South Carolina, knew one another well
enough to write, which was not likely, the cost of sending a letter in 1756,
when the first overland post was begun, amounted to the wage of a laborer
for a week. Not surprisingly, one of the most crucial tasks the American
radicals, led by Samuel Adams of Boston, set themselves a decade later was
to organize “committees of correspondence” to introduce the colonists to
one another. At the first meeting of the Continental Congress in 1774, even
the sophisticated and active leaders had not met each other. When they did
meet, they were so worried about their “diversity of religions, educations,
manners, interests, such as it would seem almost impossible to unite in one
plan of conduct,” in the words of John Adams, that they pledged secrecy in
their discussions. Americans were far from being at ease with one another.
At ease or not, the colonists were learning to manage their own lives.
From the model of Parliament, they adapted their legislatures; from English
courts, they freely borrowed their legal system, with its tradition of deci-
sions and concepts of evidence and justice.
The colonists adapted but rarely invented. So they did not establish
police forces. Like the English, they considered what we think of as police
work to be the duty of every citizen. Hearing a “hue and cry”—the antiq-
158 THE BIRTH OF AMERICA