That the colonies which formed the root of this republic escaped the more
serious evils of a corruption so gross and so widely spread, can only be
ascribed to the characters of those by whom they were peopled.

Perhaps nine-tenths of all the white inhabitants of the Union are the
direct descendants of men who quitted Europe in order to worship God
according to conviction and conscience. If the Puritans of New-England,
the Friends of Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware, the Catholics of
Maryland, the Presbyterians of the upper counties of Virginia and of the
Carolinas, and the Huguenots, brought with them the exaggeration of their
peculiar sects, it was an exaggeration that tended to correct most of
their ordinary practices. Still the English Provinces were not permitted,
altogether, to escape from the moral dependency that seems nearly
inseparable from colonial government, or to be entirely exempt from the
wide contamination of the times.

The State of New-York, as is well known, was originally a colony of the
United Provinces. The settlement was made in the year 1613; and the Dutch
East India Company, under whose authority the establishment was made,
claimed the whole country between the Connecticut and the mouth of
Delaware-bay, a territory which, as it had a corresponding depth, equalled
the whole surface of the present kingdom of France. Of this vast region,
however, they never occupied but a narrow belt on each side of the Hudson,
with, here and there, a settlement on a few of the river flats, more
inland.

There is a providence in the destiny of nations, that sets at nought the
most profound of human calculations. Had the dominion of the Dutch
continued a century longer, there would have existed in the very heart of
the Union a people opposed to its establishment, by their language,