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<h2> Chapter II: Origin Of The Anglo-Americans—Part I </h2>
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<h2> Chapter Summary </h2>
<p>Utility of knowing the origin of nations in order to understand their
social condition and their laws—America the only country in which
the starting-point of a great people has been clearly observable—In
what respects all who emigrated to British America were similar—In
what they differed—Remark applicable to all Europeans who
established themselves on the shores of the New World—Colonization
of Virginia—Colonization of New England—Original character of
the first inhabitants of New England—Their arrival—Their first
laws—Their social contract—Penal code borrowed from the Hebrew
legislation—Religious fervor—Republican spirit—Intimate
union of the spirit of religion with the spirit of liberty.</p>
<p>Origin Of The Anglo-Americans, And Its Importance In Relation To Their
Future Condition.</p>
<p>After the birth of a human being his early years are obscurely spent in
the toils or pleasures of childhood. As he grows up the world receives
him, when his manhood begins, and he enters into contact with his fellows.
He is then studied for the first time, and it is imagined that the germ of
the vices and the virtues of his maturer years is then formed. This, if I
am not mistaken, is a great error. We must begin higher up; we must watch
the infant in its mother's arms; we must see the first images which the
external world casts upon the dark mirror of his mind; the first
occurrences which he witnesses; we must hear the first words which awaken
the sleeping powers of thought, and stand by his earliest efforts, if we
would understand the prejudices, the habits, and the passions which will
rule his life. The entire man is, so to speak, to be seen in the cradle of
the child.</p>
<p>The growth of nations presents something analogous to this: they all bear
some marks of their origin; and the circumstances which accompanied their
birth and contributed to their rise affect the whole term of their being.
If we were able to go back to the elements of states, and to examine the
oldest monuments of their history, I doubt not that we should discover the
primal cause of the prejudices, the habits, the ruling passions, and, in
short, of all that constitutes what is called the national character; we
should then find the explanation of certain customs which now seem at
variance with the prevailing manners; of such laws as conflict with
established principles; and of such incoherent opinions as are here and
there to be met with in society, like those fragments of broken chains
which we sometimes see hanging from the vault of an edifice, and
supporting nothing. This might explain the destinies of certain nations,
which seem borne on by an unknown force to ends of which they themselves
are ignorant. But hitherto facts have been wanting to researches of this
kind: the spirit of inquiry has only come upon communities in their latter
days; and when they at length contemplated their origin, time had already
obscured it, or ignorance and pride adorned it with truth-concealing
fables.</p>
<p>America is the only country in which it has been possible to witness the
natural and tranquil growth of society, and where the influences exercised
on the future condition of states by their origin is clearly
distinguishable. At the period when the peoples of Europe landed in the
New World their national characteristics were already completely formed;
each of them had a physiognomy of its own; and as they had already
attained that stage of civilization at which men are led to study
themselves, they have transmitted to us a faithful picture of their
opinions, their manners, and their laws. The men of the sixteenth century
are almost as well known to us as our contemporaries. America,
consequently, exhibits in the broad light of day the phenomena which the
ignorance or rudeness of earlier ages conceals from our researches. Near
enough to the time when the states of America were founded, to be
accurately acquainted with their elements, and sufficiently removed from
that period to judge of some of their results, the men of our own day seem
destined to see further than their predecessors into the series of human
events. Providence has given us a torch which our forefathers did not
possess, and has allowed us to discern fundamental causes in the history
of the world which the obscurity of the past concealed from them. If we
carefully examine the social and political state of America, after having
studied its history, we shall remain perfectly convinced that not an
opinion, not a custom, not a law, I may even say not an event, is upon
record which the origin of that people will not explain. The readers of
this book will find the germ of all that is to follow in the present
chapter, and the key to almost the whole work.</p>
<p>The emigrants who came, at different periods to occupy the territory now
covered by the American Union differed from each other in many respects;
their aim was not the same, and they governed themselves on different
principles. These men had, however, certain features in common, and they
were all placed in an analogous situation. The tie of language is perhaps
the strongest and the most durable that can unite mankind. All the
emigrants spoke the same tongue; they were all offsets from the same
people. Born in a country which had been agitated for centuries by the
struggles of faction, and in which all parties had been obliged in their
turn to place themselves under the protection of the laws, their political
education had been perfected in this rude school, and they were more
conversant with the notions of right and the principles of true freedom
than the greater part of their European contemporaries. At the period of
their first emigrations the parish system, that fruitful germ of free
institutions, was deeply rooted in the habits of the English; and with it
the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people had been introduced into the
bosom of the monarchy of the House of Tudor.</p>
<p>The religious quarrels which have agitated the Christian world were then
rife. England had plunged into the new order of things with headlong
vehemence. The character of its inhabitants, which had always been sedate
and reflective, became argumentative and austere. General information had
been increased by intellectual debate, and the mind had received a deeper
cultivation. Whilst religion was the topic of discussion, the morals of
the people were reformed. All these national features are more or less
discoverable in the physiognomy of those adventurers who came to seek a
new home on the opposite shores of the Atlantic.</p>
<p>Another remark, to which we shall hereafter have occasion to recur, is
applicable not only to the English, but to the French, the Spaniards, and
all the Europeans who successively established themselves in the New
World. All these European colonies contained the elements, if not the
development, of a complete democracy. Two causes led to this result. It
may safely be advanced, that on leaving the mother-country the emigrants
had in general no notion of superiority over one another. The happy and
the powerful do not go into exile, and there are no surer guarantees of
equality among men than poverty and misfortune. It happened, however, on
several occasions, that persons of rank were driven to America by
political and religious quarrels. Laws were made to establish a gradation
of ranks; but it was soon found that the soil of America was opposed to a
territorial aristocracy. To bring that refractory land into cultivation,
the constant and interested exertions of the owner himself were necessary;
and when the ground was prepared, its produce was found to be insufficient
to enrich a master and a farmer at the same time. The land was then
naturally broken up into small portions, which the proprietor cultivated
for himself. Land is the basis of an aristocracy, which clings to the soil
that supports it; for it is not by privileges alone, nor by birth, but by
landed property handed down from generation to generation, that an
aristocracy is constituted. A nation may present immense fortunes and
extreme wretchedness, but unless those fortunes are territorial there is
no aristocracy, but simply the class of the rich and that of the poor.</p>
<p>All the British colonies had then a great degree of similarity at the
epoch of their settlement. All of them, from their first beginning, seemed
destined to witness the growth, not of the aristocratic liberty of their
mother-country, but of that freedom of the middle and lower orders of
which the history of the world had as yet furnished no complete example.</p>
<p>In this general uniformity several striking differences were however
discernible, which it is necessary to point out. Two branches may be
distinguished in the Anglo-American family, which have hitherto grown up
without entirely commingling; the one in the South, the other in the
North.</p>
<p>Virginia received the first English colony; the emigrants took possession
of it in 1607. The idea that mines of gold and silver are the sources of
national wealth was at that time singularly prevalent in Europe; a fatal
delusion, which has done more to impoverish the nations which adopted it,
and has cost more lives in America, than the united influence of war and
bad laws. The men sent to Virginia *a were seekers of gold, adventurers,
without resources and without character, whose turbulent and restless
spirit endangered the infant colony, *b and rendered its progress
uncertain. The artisans and agriculturists arrived afterwards; and,
although they were a more moral and orderly race of men, they were in
nowise above the level of the inferior classes in England. *c No lofty
conceptions, no intellectual system, directed the foundation of these new
settlements. The colony was scarcely established when slavery was
introduced, *d and this was the main circumstance which has exercised so
prodigious an influence on the character, the laws, and all the future
prospects of the South. Slavery, as we shall afterwards show, dishonors
labor; it introduces idleness into society, and with idleness, ignorance
and pride, luxury and distress. It enervates the powers of the mind, and
benumbs the activity of man. The influence of slavery, united to the
English character, explains the manners and the social condition of the
Southern States.</p>
<p class="foot">
a <br/> [ The charter granted by the Crown of England in 1609 stipulated,
amongst other conditions, that the adventurers should pay to the Crown a
fifth of the produce of all gold and silver mines. See Marshall's "Life of
Washington," vol. i. pp. 18-66.] [Footnote b: A large portion of the
adventurers, says Stith ("History of Virginia"), were unprincipled young
men of family, whom their parents were glad to ship off, discharged
servants, fraudulent bankrupts, or debauchees; and others of the same
class, people more apt to pillage and destroy than to assist the
settlement, were the seditious chiefs, who easily led this band into every
kind of extravagance and excess. See for the history of Virginia the
following works:—</p>
<p>"History of Virginia, from the First Settlements in the year 1624," by
Smith.</p>
<p>"History of Virginia," by William Stith.</p>
<p>"History of Virginia, from the Earliest Period," by Beverley.]</p>
<p class="foot">
c <br/> [ It was not till some time later that a certain number of rich
English capitalists came to fix themselves in the colony.]</p>
<p class="foot">
d <br/> [ Slavery was introduced about the year 1620 by a Dutch vessel
which landed twenty negroes on the banks of the river James. See Chalmer.]</p>
<p>In the North, the same English foundation was modified by the most
opposite shades of character; and here I may be allowed to enter into some
details. The two or three main ideas which constitute the basis of the
social theory of the United States were first combined in the Northern
English colonies, more generally denominated the States of New England. *e
The principles of New England spread at first to the neighboring states;
they then passed successively to the more distant ones; and at length they
imbued the whole Confederation. They now extend their influence beyond its
limits over the whole American world. The civilization of New England has
been like a beacon lit upon a hill, which, after it has diffused its
warmth around, tinges the distant horizon with its glow.</p>
<p class="foot">
e <br/> [ The States of New England are those situated to the east of the
Hudson; they are now six in number: 1, Connecticut; 2, Rhode Island; 3,
Massachusetts; 4, Vermont; 5, New Hampshire; 6, Maine.]</p>
<p>The foundation of New England was a novel spectacle, and all the
circumstances attending it were singular and original. The large majority
of colonies have been first inhabited either by men without education and
without resources, driven by their poverty and their misconduct from the
land which gave them birth, or by speculators and adventurers greedy of
gain. Some settlements cannot even boast so honorable an origin; St.
Domingo was founded by buccaneers; and the criminal courts of England
originally supplied the population of Australia.</p>
<p>The settlers who established themselves on the shores of New England all
belonged to the more independent classes of their native country. Their
union on the soil of America at once presented the singular phenomenon of
a society containing neither lords nor common people, neither rich nor
poor. These men possessed, in proportion to their number, a greater mass
of intelligence than is to be found in any European nation of our own
time. All, without a single exception, had received a good education, and
many of them were known in Europe for their talents and their
acquirements. The other colonies had been founded by adventurers without
family; the emigrants of New England brought with them the best elements
of order and morality—they landed in the desert accompanied by their
wives and children. But what most especially distinguished them was the
aim of their undertaking. They had not been obliged by necessity to leave
their country; the social position they abandoned was one to be regretted,
and their means of subsistence were certain. Nor did they cross the
Atlantic to improve their situation or to increase their wealth; the call
which summoned them from the comforts of their homes was purely
intellectual; and in facing the inevitable sufferings of exile their
object was the triumph of an idea.</p>
<p>The emigrants, or, as they deservedly styled themselves, the Pilgrims,
belonged to that English sect the austerity of whose principles had
acquired for them the name of Puritans. Puritanism was not merely a
religious doctrine, but it corresponded in many points with the most
absolute democratic and republican theories. It was this tendency which
had aroused its most dangerous adversaries. Persecuted by the Government
of the mother-country, and disgusted by the habits of a society opposed to
the rigor of their own principles, the Puritans went forth to seek some
rude and unfrequented part of the world, where they could live according
to their own opinions, and worship God in freedom.</p>
<p>A few quotations will throw more light upon the spirit of these pious
adventures than all we can say of them. Nathaniel Morton, *f the historian
of the first years of the settlement, thus opens his subject:</p>
<p class="foot">
f <br/> [ "New England's Memorial," p. 13; Boston, 1826. See also
"Hutchinson's History," vol. ii. p. 440.]</p>
<p>"Gentle Reader,—I have for some length of time looked upon it as a
duty incumbent, especially on the immediate successors of those that have
had so large experience of those many memorable and signal demonstrations
of God's goodness, viz., the first beginners of this Plantation in New
England, to commit to writing his gracious dispensations on that behalf;
having so many inducements thereunto, not onely otherwise but so
plentifully in the Sacred Scriptures: that so, what we have seen, and what
our fathers have told us (Psalm lxxviii. 3, 4), we may not hide from our
children, showing to the generations to come the praises of the Lord; that
especially the seed of Abraham his servant, and the children of Jacob his
chosen (Psalm cv. 5, 6), may remember his marvellous works in the
beginning and progress of the planting of New England, his wonders and the
judgments of his mouth; how that God brought a vine into this wilderness;
that he cast out the heathen, and planted it; that he made room for it and
caused it to take deep root; and it filled the land (Psalm lxxx. 8, 9).
And not onely so, but also that he hath guided his people by his strength
to his holy habitation and planted them in the mountain of his inheritance
in respect of precious Gospel enjoyments: and that as especially God may
have the glory of all unto whom it is most due; so also some rays of glory
may reach the names of those blessed Saints that were the main instruments
and the beginning of this happy enterprise."</p>
<p>It is impossible to read this opening paragraph without an involuntary
feeling of religious awe; it breathes the very savor of Gospel antiquity.
The sincerity of the author heightens his power of language. The band
which to his eyes was a mere party of adventurers gone forth to seek their
fortune beyond seas appears to the reader as the germ of a great nation
wafted by Providence to a predestined shore.</p>
<p>The author thus continues his narrative of the departure of the first
pilgrims:—</p>
<p>"So they left that goodly and pleasant city of Leyden, *g which had been
their resting-place for above eleven years; but they knew that they were
pilgrims and strangers here below, and looked not much on these things,
but lifted up their eyes to Heaven, their dearest country, where God hath
prepared for them a city (Heb. xi. 16), and therein quieted their spirits.
When they came to Delfs-Haven they found the ship and all things ready;
and such of their friends as could not come with them followed after them,
and sundry came from Amsterdam to see them shipt, and to take their leaves
of them. One night was spent with little sleep with the most, but with
friendly entertainment and Christian discourse, and other real expressions
of true Christian love. The next day they went on board, and their friends
with them, where truly doleful was the sight of that sad and mournful
parting, to hear what sighs and sobs and prayers did sound amongst them;
what tears did gush from every eye, and pithy speeches pierced each
other's heart, that sundry of the Dutch strangers that stood on the Key as
spectators could not refrain from tears. But the tide (which stays for no
man) calling them away, that were thus loth to depart, their Reverend
Pastor falling down on his knees, and they all with him, with watery
cheeks commended them with most fervent prayers unto the Lord and his
blessing; and then, with mutual embraces and many tears they took their
leaves one of another, which proved to be the last leave to many of them."</p>
<p class="foot">
g <br/> [ The emigrants were, for the most part, godly Christians from the
North of England, who had quitted their native country because they were
"studious of reformation, and entered into covenant to walk with one
another according to the primitive pattern of the Word of God." They
emigrated to Holland, and settled in the city of Leyden in 1610, where
they abode, being lovingly respected by the Dutch, for many years: they
left it in 1620 for several reasons, the last of which was, that their
posterity would in a few generations become Dutch, and so lose their
interest in the English nation; they being desirous rather to enlarge His
Majesty's dominions, and to live under their natural prince.—Translator's
Note.]</p>
<p>The emigrants were about 150 in number, including the women and the
children. Their object was to plant a colony on the shores of the Hudson;
but after having been driven about for some time in the Atlantic Ocean,
they were forced to land on that arid coast of New England which is now
the site of the town of Plymouth. The rock is still shown on which the
pilgrims disembarked. *h</p>
<p class="foot">
h <br/> [ This rock is become an object of veneration in the United
States. I have seen bits of it carefully preserved in several towns of the
Union. Does not this sufficiently show how entirely all human power and
greatness is in the soul of man? Here is a stone which the feet of a few
outcasts pressed for an instant, and this stone becomes famous; it is
treasured by a great nation, its very dust is shared as a relic: and what
is become of the gateways of a thousand palaces?]</p>
<p>"But before we pass on," continues our historian, "let the reader with me
make a pause and seriously consider this poor people's present condition,
the more to be raised up to admiration of God's goodness towards them in
their preservation: for being now passed the vast ocean, and a sea of
troubles before them in expectation, they had now no friends to welcome
them, no inns to entertain or refresh them, no houses, or much less towns
to repair unto to seek for succour: and for the season it was winter, and
they that know the winters of the country know them to be sharp and
violent, subject to cruel and fierce storms, dangerous to travel to known
places, much more to search unknown coasts. Besides, what could they see
but a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wilde beasts, and wilde
men? and what multitudes of them there were, they then knew not: for which
way soever they turned their eyes (save upward to Heaven) they could have
but little solace or content in respect of any outward object; for summer
being ended, all things stand in appearance with a weather-beaten face,
and the whole country full of woods and thickets, represented a wild and
savage hew; if they looked behind them, there was the mighty ocean which
they had passed, and was now as a main bar or gulph to separate them from
all the civil parts of the world."</p>
<p>It must not be imagined that the piety of the Puritans was of a merely
speculative kind, or that it took no cognizance of the course of worldly
affairs. Puritanism, as I have already remarked, was scarcely less a
political than a religious doctrine. No sooner had the emigrants landed on
the barren coast described by Nathaniel Morton than it was their first
care to constitute a society, by passing the following Act:</p>
<p>"In the name of God. Amen. We, whose names are underwritten, the loyal
subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord King James, etc., etc., Having
undertaken for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian Faith,
and the honour of our King and country, a voyage to plant the first colony
in the northern parts of Virginia; Do by these presents solemnly and
mutually, in the presence of God and one another, covenant and combine
ourselves together into a civil body politick, for our better ordering and
preservation, and furtherance of the ends aforesaid: and by virtue hereof
do enact, constitute and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts,
constitutions, and officers, from time to time, as shall be thought most
meet and convenient for the general good of the Colony: unto which we
promise all due submission and obedience," etc. *i</p>
<p class="foot">
i <br/> [ The emigrants who founded the State of Rhode Island in 1638,
those who landed at New Haven in 1637, the first settlers in Connecticut
in 1639, and the founders of Providence in 1640, began in like manner by
drawing up a social contract, which was acceded to by all the interested
parties. See "Pitkin's History," pp. 42 and 47.]</p>
<p>This happened in 1620, and from that time forwards the emigration went on.
The religious and political passions which ravaged the British Empire
during the whole reign of Charles I drove fresh crowds of sectarians every
year to the shores of America. In England the stronghold of Puritanism was
in the middle classes, and it was from the middle classes that the
majority of the emigrants came. The population of New England increased
rapidly; and whilst the hierarchy of rank despotically classed the
inhabitants of the mother-country, the colony continued to present the
novel spectacle of a community homogeneous in all its parts. A democracy,
more perfect than any which antiquity had dreamt of, started in full size
and panoply from the midst of an ancient feudal society.</p>
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