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The Captain turned off into Broad Street, and rode past the Church of Saint Michael with its lofty steeple, so reminiscent of the work of Wren and so greatly resembling Saint Martin's-in-the-Fields. He crossed the open space at the Corner presided over by the statue of Pitt, which had been enthusiastically erected there five years ago to mark the province's appreciation of the Great Commoner who had championed the cause of the colonies in the Stamp-Act troubles.

And here the bustle of life and traffic was such that the Captain found it in the main impossible to proceed at more than a walking pace. There were groups of seafaring men of all degrees from the ships in the harbour, standing to gape upon the sights of the town. Now it was a party of negro field servants in brightly coloured cottons, shepherded by a swarthy overseer, that claimed their attention; now it was a file of three Catawba Indians, feather-crowned and mantled in gaudy blankets, each leading a pack-horse laden with the merchandise against which they had traded the pelts from their distant settlements beyond Camden. More than once Captain Mandeville was compelled to draw rein altogether to give passage to the lumbering mahogany coach of some wealthy planter, the tall phaeton driven by a young colonial macaroni, with his liveried negro groom sitting like a statue of bronze behind, or the sedan chair slung between its black porters bearing a lady of fashion on her shopping excursions. For all of the towns in North America this was the one in which the luxury and refinements of the Old World were combined in the highest degree with the wealth and abundance of the New. And, as was natural, their sybaritism governed their politics. There were, of course, firebrands, republican extremists such as Christopher Gadsden and this new convert to republicanism Mr. Harry Latimer, and there was an unruly mob of mechanics and artisans and the like who with little to stake were ready enough for adventure; but in the main the wealthy oligarchy of planters and merchants which had so long held undisputed sway in South Carolina, whilst sympathizing with the grievances of the North and the opposers of the oppressive royal rule, was restrained from overt action by self-interest. The security of person and property which they now enjoyed might be lost to them in an upheaval. And the same incubus of passivity sat upon the spirit of the avowed tories. In their ranks, too, there were extremists, like Sir Andrew Carey and the Fletchalls, who left everything but a fanatical duty to the King out of their calculations. But in the main they were as anxious as those on the other side to avoid an open rupture.