The government and clergy had little notion of the significance of a slender stream of Scotch-Irish emigration which, as early as 1720, began to flow into the valley of the Shenandoah.

So cheap a defense against the perils that threatened from the western frontier it would have been folly to discourage by odious religious proscription.

The reasonable anxiety of the clergy as to what might come of this invasion of a sturdy and uncompromising Puritanism struggled without permanent success against the obvious interest of the commonwealth.

The addition of this new and potent element to the Christian population of the seaboard colonies was part of the unrecognized preparation for the Great Awakening.
FOOTNOTES: [41:1] Bancroft, vol.i., p.

138.
[44:1] See the interesting demonstration of this point in articles by E.
D.Neill in "Hours at Home," vol.vi., pp.