FROM

INTRODUCTION

BY GEORGE PERRY MORRIS

ROM the earliest days of the New England Colonies down to the present time, those European analysts of our national life, whose opinions have been based on personal observation, have usually conceded that in New England towns and villages one might, at almost any period of their history, find a higher average degree of physical comfort, intelligence and mental attainment, and political liberty and power than was or is to be found in any other communities of Christendom. Thus Alexis de Tocqueville, in 1835, wrote:

"The existence of the townships of New England is, in general, a happy one. Their government is suited to their tastes, and chosen by themselves.

The

conduct of local business is easy. . . . No tradition exists of a distinction of ranks; no portion of the community is tempted to oppress the remainder; and the

abuses which may injure isolated individuals are forgotten in the general contentment which prevails. . . The native of New England is attached to his township because it is independent and free; his co-operation in its affairs ensures his attachment to its interest; the well-being it affords him secures his affection, and its welfare is the aim of his ambition and of his future exertions. He takes a part in every occurrence in the place; he practises the art of government in the small sphere within his reach; he accustoms himself to those forms which can alone ensure the steady progress of liberty; he imbibes their spirit; he acquires a taste for order, comprehends the union of the balance of powers, and collects clear practical notions on the nature of his duties and the extent of his rights."

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If this be true, the question inevitably arises, how has it come to pass? New England, as a whole, is far from fertile. Its winters are long and severe. Of mineral wealth it has little. The raw materials for its countless factories and mills, the fuel for its factories, homes, and railroads, must be obtained in the territory south and west of the Hudson River. The cereals which furnish the staple diet of its peo

1 De Tocqueville's Democracy in America, chapter v. Mr. F. J. Lippitt, who assisted M. de Tocqueville in the preparation of this work, says that once when they had been talking about townmeetings, de Tocqueville exclaimed with a kindling eye (usually quite expressionless), 'Mais, c'est la commune !'"-Cf. The Century Magazine, September. 1898, p. 707.

ple come from Western plains. Its best blood and brawn have gone to found commonwealths ranging from the Alleghany to the Sierra Nevada mountains, and, into towns once populated and dominated by the purest of English stock, there have come Irish from Ireland and Canada, French by way of Canada, Portuguese, Italians, and Jews from Russia, so that, in 1890, the alien male adult population of the several States was found by the Federal census takers to be, in Maine, 51.43 per cent.; New Hampshire, 50.5 per cent.; Vermont, 41.25 per cent.; Massachusetts, 46.10 per cent. ; Rhode Island, 49.78 per cent.; Connecticut, 36.52 per cent.

And yet, notwithstanding these economic disadvantages, this depletion of a population inheriting noble ideals, and the infusion of a class of settlers holding, in many instances, political and religious convictions quite at variance with those of the founders of the colonies, the "type" persists. The New England towns are still unlike, and in some respects superior to, those of other sections of the country. The New England States still lead in reformatory legislation. New England's approval or disapproval of ideas affecting na

tional destiny still has weight with Congress and Presidents altogether disproportionate to the number of her representatives in Congress or her votes in the Electoral College.

If one will walk about New England towns one will find in each a church, a town-house, and a school, and in most of them a railroad station and a factory. In the majority of them there will also be a public library, small perhaps and usually housed in the town-house, but open to all, and supported from the public funds. In the larger towns, especially in those where manufacturing is a prominent factor in the communal prosperity, a hospital, supported by public taxation, is open to all. In almost every town there is a grass-covered, tree-shaded

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common," which serves as a village or town park, and on it usually stand memorial tablets or statues testifying to the valor of the dead who went forth to fight in the War of the Revolution or in the Civil War.

The church symbolizes that belief in God and that disposition to obey His will and law which the noblest and wisest men of all ages and climes have agreed upon as the sine qua non of civic as well as of individual prosperity, and in this instance it also stands for that

separation of Church and State which our national experience and that of Canada and the Australian Colonies as well-shows to be the ideal relation. That for a time, in the early days of Massachusetts and Connecticut, there was an unsuccessful attempt to preserve a union of State and Church, an attempt which had for some of its least commendable incidents the wholesale hanging of men and women for witchcraft, the expulsion of Quakers, and the ostracism or exclusion of Roman Catholics and Anglicans, is not to be denied.

That the people of New England have been duly conscientious is apparent by the multiplication of churches at home, and by their neverceasing, overflowing gifts to establish churches, colleges, schools, and Christian missions in the South and West and in foreign lands. It is from the thrifty, prosperous, philanthropic New Englander that the treasuries of the great Protestant missionary and educational societies. receive their largest average per-capita gifts, and it is to New England that the steps of the Western and Southern educator still turn for endowments which his State may not, or the people cannot, or do not, give.

Peopled by inhabitants given over to intro