Beacon Lights of History, Volume 11 | Page 9

common throughout all the Colonies.
And everywhere it seems to have grown out of the germ of a devotion
to religious freedom, developed on a secluded continent, where men
were shut in by the sea on the one hand, and perils from the fierce
aborigines on the other. The Puritans of New England, the Hollanders
of New York, Penn's Quaker colony in Pennsylvania, the Huguenots of
South Carolina, the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians of North Carolina,
Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, were all of
Calvinistic training and came from European persecutions. All were
rigidly Puritanical in their social and Sabbatarian observances. Even the
Episcopalians of Virginia, where a larger Norman-English stock was
settled, with infusions of French-Huguenot blood, and where slavery
bred more men of wealth and broader social distinctions, were sternly
religious in their laws, although far more lax and pleasure-loving in
their customs. Everywhere, this new life of Englishmen in a new land
developed their self-reliance, their power of work, their skill in arms,
their habit of common association for common purposes, and their keen,
intelligent knowledge of political conditions, with a tenacious grip on
their rights as Englishmen.
In the enjoyment, then, of unknown civil and religious liberties, of
equal laws, and a mild government, the Colonies rapidly grew, in spite
of Indian wars. In New England they had also to combat a hard soil and
a cold climate. Their equals in rugged strength, in domestic virtues, in
religious veneration were not to be seen on the face of the whole earth.
They may have been intolerant, narrow-minded, brusque and rough in
manners, and with little love or appreciation of art; they may have been

opinionated and self-sufficient: but they were loyal to duties and to
their "Invisible King." Above all things, they were tenacious of their
rights, and scrupled no sacrifices to secure them, and to perpetuate
them among their children.
It is not my object to describe the history of the Puritans, after they had
made a firm settlement in the primeval forests, down to the
Revolutionary War, but only to glance at the institutions they created or
adopted, which have extended more or less over all parts of North
America, and laid the foundation for a magnificent empire.
At the close of the Seven Years' War, in 1763, which ended in the
conquest of Canada from the French by the combined forces of
England and her American subjects, the population of the Colonies--in
New England and the Middle and Southern sections--was not far from
two millions. Success in war and some development in wealth naturally
engendered self-confidence. I apprehend that the secret and unavowed
consciousness of power, creating the desire to be a nation rather than a
mere colony dependent on Great Britain,--or, if colonies, yet free and
untrammelled by the home government,--had as much to do with the
struggle for independence as the discussion of rights, at least among the
leaders of the people, both clerical and lay. The feeling that they were
not represented in Parliament was not of much account, for more than
three quarters of the English at home had no representation at all. To be
represented in Parliament was utterly impracticable, and everybody
knew it. But when arbitrary measures were adopted by the English
government, in defiance of charters, the popular orators made a good
point in magnifying the injustice of "taxation without representation."
The Colonies had been marvellously prospered, and if not rich they
were powerful, and were spreading toward the indefinite and
unexplored West. The Seven Years' War had developed their military
capacity. It was New England troops which had taken Louisburg. The
charm of British invincibility had been broken by Braddock's defeat.
The Americans had learned self-reliance in their wars with the Indians,
and had nearly exterminated them along the coast without British aid.
The Colonists three thousand miles away from England had begun to

feel their importance, and to realize the difficulty of their conquest by
any forces that England could command. The self-exaggeration
common to all new countries was universal. Few as the people were,
compared with the population of the mother country, their imagination
was boundless. They felt, if they did not clearly foresee, their inevitable
future. The North American continent was theirs by actual settlement
and long habits of self-government, and they were determined to keep
it. Why should they be dependent on a country that crippled their
commerce, that stifled their manufactures, that regulated their fisheries,
that appointed their governors, and regarded them with selfish ends,--as
a people to be taxed in order that English merchants and manufacturers
should be enriched? They did not feel weak or dependent; what new
settlers in the Western wilds ever felt that they could not take care of
their farms and their flocks and everything which they owned?