ness was censured, pitied, and forgiven; the law compelled the seducer of innocence to marry the person who had imposed every obligation by the concession of every right. The law implies an extremely pure community; in no other could it have found a place in the statute-book.

The benevolence of the Puritans appears from other examples. Their thoughts were always fixed on posterity. Domestic discipline was highly valued; the law was severe against the undutiful child; and it was severe against a faithless parent. Till 1654, the laws did not permit any imprisonment for debt, except when there was an appearance of some estate which the debtor would not produce. Even the brute creation was not forgotten; and cruelty toward animals was a civil offence. The sympathies of the colonists were wide; a feeling for Protestant Germany is as old as emigration; and during the thirty years' war the people of New England held fasts and offered prayers for the success of their German brethren.

The earliest years of the residence of Puritans in America were years of great hardship and affliction; this short season of distress was promptly followed by abundance and happiness. The people struck root in the soil immediately. They were, from the first, industrious, enterprising, and frugal; and affluence followed of course. When persecution ceased in England, there were already in New England "thousands who would not change their place for any other in the world;" and they were tempted in vain with invitations to the Bahama isles, to Ireland, to Jamaica, to Trinidad. The purity of morals completes the picture of colonial felicity. "As Ireland will not brook venomous beasts, so will not that land vile livers." One might dwell there "from year to year, and not see a drunkard, or hear an oath, or meet a beggar." As a consequence, the average duration of life in New England, compared with Europe of that day, was doubled; and, of all who were born into the world, more than two in ten, full four in nineteen, attained the age of seventy. Of those who lived beyond ninety, the proportion, as compared with European tables of longevity, was still more remarkable.

I have dwelt the longer on the character of the early

Puritans of New England, for they were the parents of one third the whole white population of the United States as it was in 1834. Within the first fifteen years-and there was never afterward any considerable increase from England-we have seen that there came over twenty-one thousand two hundred persons, or four thousand families. Their descendants were, in 1834, not far from four millions. Each family had multiplied, on the average, to one thousand souls. To New York and Ohio, where they then constituted half the popula tion, they carried the Puritan system of free schools; and their example is spreading it through the civilized world.

Historians have loved to eulogize the manners and virtues, the glory and the benefits, of chivalry. Puritanism accomplished for mankind far more. If it had the sectarian crime of intolerance, chivalry had the vices of dissoluteness. The knights were brave from gallantry of spirit; the Puritans, from the fear of God. The knights obeyed the law of honor; the Puritans hearkened to the voice of duty. The knights were proud of loyalty; the Puritans, of liberty. The knights did homage to monarchs, in whose smile they beheld honor, whose rebuke was disgrace; the Puritans, in their disdain of ceremony, would not bow at the name of Jesus, nor bend the knee to the King of kings. Chivalry delighted in outward show, favored pleasure, multiplied amusements, and degraded the human race by an exclusive respect for the privileged classes; Puritanism bridled the passions, commanded the virtues of self-denial, and rescued the name of man from dishonor. The former valued courtesy; the latter, justice. The former adorned society by graceful refinements; the latter founded national grandeur on universal education. The institutions of chivalry were subverted by the gradually increasing weight and knowledge and opulence of the industrious classes; the Puritans, rallying upon those classes, planted in their hearts the undying principles of democratic liberty.

The age of Puritanism was passing away. Time was silently softening its asperities, and the revolutions of England prepared an era in its fortunes. Massachusetts never acknowledged Richard Cromwell; it read in the aspect of parties the impending restoration.

HISTORY

OF THE

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

AS COLONIES.

IN THREE PARTS.

PART II.

BRITISH AMERICA ATTAINS GEOGRAPHICAL UNITY.

FROM 1660 TO 1688.

CHAPTER I.

THE FALL AND RESTORATION OF THE STUARTS.

THE revolution, which, in 1660, came to its end, had been in its origin a democratic revolution, and had apparently succeeded in none of its ultimate purposes. The power of the feudal aristocracy had been gradually broken by the increased authority of the monarch; and the people, beginning to claim the lead in the progress of humanity, prepared to contend for equality against privilege, as well as for freedom against prerogative. The contest failed, because too much was attempted. Immediate emancipation from the past was impossible; hereditary inequalities were themselves endeared to the nation, through the beneficent institutions with which they were connected; the mass of the people was still buried in listless ignorance; even for the strongest minds, public experience had not yet generated the principles by which a reconstruction of the government on a popular basis could have been safely undertaken; and thus the democratic revolution in England was a failure, alike from the events and passions of the fierce struggle which rendered moderation impossible, and from the unripeness of the age, which had not as yet acquired the political knowledge that time alone could generate or gather up.

Charles I. [1629-1640], inheriting his father's belief in the unlimited rights of the king of England, conspired against the national constitution, which he, as the most favored among the natives of England, was the most solemnly bound to protect; and he resolved to govern without the aid of a parliament. To convene one was therefore, in itself, an acknowledgment of defeat. The house of commons, which assembled in April, 1640, was filled with men not less loyal to the mon