The American Spirit in Literature | Page 9

good wages, but the lesson had been taught.
It gave Franklin's "Poor Richard" mottoes their flavor of homely,
experienced truth.
Order in daily life led straight to political order, just as the equality and
resourcefulness of the frontier, stimulated by isolation from Europe, led
to political independence. The pioneer learned to make things for
himself instead of sending to London for them, and by and by he grew
as impatient of waiting for a political edict from London as he would
become in waiting for a London plough. "This year," wrote one
colonist, "ye will go to complain to the Parliament, and the next year
they will send to see how it is, and the third year the government is
changed." The time was coming when no more complaints would be
sent.
One of the most startling instances of this colonial instinct for
self-government is the case of Thomas Hooker. Trained in Emmanuel
College of the old Cambridge, he arrived in the new Cambridge in

1633. He grew restless under its theocratic government, being, it was
said, "a person who when he was doing his Master's work, would put a
king into his pocket." So he led the famous migration of 1636 from
Massachusetts to Hartford, and there helped to create a federation of
independent towns which made their own constitution without
mentioning any king, and became one of the corner-stones of American
democracy. In May, 1638, Hooker declared in a sermon before the
General Court "that the choice of public magistrates belongs unto the
people by God's own allowance," and "that they who have the power to
appoint officers and magistrates, it is in their power, also, to set the
bounds and limitations of the power and place into which they call
them." The reason of this is: "Because the foundation of authority is
laid, firstly, in the free consent of the people." This high discourse
antedates the famous pamphlets on liberty by Milton. It is a
half-century earlier than Locke's "Treatise on Government," a century
and a quarter earlier than Rousseau's "Contrat Social," and it precedes
by one hundred and thirty-eight years the American Declaration of
Independence.
But the slightest acquaintance with colonial writings will reveal the fact
that such political radicalism as Thomas Hooker's was accompanied by
an equally striking conservatism in other directions. One of these
conservative traits was the pioneer's respect for property, and
particularly for the land cleared by his own toil. Gladstone once spoke
of possession of the soil as the most important and most operative of all
social facts. Free-footed as the pioneer colonist was, he was disinclined
to part with his land without a substantial price for it. The land at his
disposal was practically illimitable, but he showed a very English
tenacity in safeguarding his hold upon his own portion.
Very English, likewise, was his attachment to the old country as
"home." The lighter and the more serious writings of the colonists are
alike in their respect for the past. In the New England settlements,
although not at first in Virginia, there was respect for learning and for
an educated clergy. The colonists revered the Bible. They maintained a
stubborn regard for the Common Law of England. Even amid all the
excitement of a successful rebellion from the mother country, this
Common Law still held the Americans to the experience of the
inescapable past.

Indeed, as the reader of today lifts his eyes from the pages of the books
written in America during the seventeenth century, and tries to meditate
upon the general difference between them and the English books
written during the same period, he will be aware of the firmness with
which the conservative forces held on this side of the Atlantic. It was
only one hundred years from the Great Armada of 1588 to the flight of
James Second, the last of the Stuart Kings. With that Revolution of
1688 the struggles characteristic of the seventeenth century in England
came to an end. A new working basis is found for thought, politics,
society, literature. But while those vast changes had been shaking
England, two generations of American colonists had cleared their
forests, fought the savages, organized their townships and their trade,
put money in their purses, and lived, though as yet hardly suspecting it,
a life that was beginning to differentiate them from the men of the Old
World. We must now glance at the various aspects of this isolated life
of theirs, as it is revealed in their books.

CHAPTER II
. THE FIRST COLONIAL LITERATURE
The simplest and oldest group of colonial writings is made up of
records of exploration and adventure. They are like the letters written
from California in 1849 to the "folks back East." Addressed to
home-keeping Englishmen across the sea, they describe