Mr. Matthew Arnold speaks, to which we owe the Bible and Christianity.
No loftier ideal has ever been conceived than that of the Puritan who
would fain have made of the world a City of God. If we could sum up all
that England owes to Puritanism, the story would be a great one indeed.
As regards the United States, we may safely say that what is noblest in
our history to-day, and of happiest augury for our social and political
future, is the impress left upon the character of our people by the
heroic men who came to New England early in the seventeenth century.

The settlement of New England by the Puritans occupies a peculiar
position in the annals of colonization, and without understanding this
we cannot properly appreciate the character of the purely democratic
society which I have sought to describe. As a general rule colonies have
been founded, either by governments or by private enterprise, for
political or commercial reasons. The aim has been--on the part of
governments--to annoy some rival power, or to get rid of criminals, or
to open some new avenue of trade, or--on the part of the people--to
escape from straitened circumstances at home, or to find a refuge from
religious persecution. In the settlement of New England none of these
motives were operative except the last, and that only to a slight
extent. The Puritans who fled from Nottinghamshire to Holland in 1608,
and twelve years afterwards crossed the ocean in the _Mayflower_, may be
said to have been driven from England by persecution. But this was not
the case with the Puritans who between 1630 and 1650 went from
Lincolnshire, Norfolk and Suffolk, and from Dorset and Devonshire, and
founded the colonies of Massachusetts and Connecticut. These men left
their homes at a time when Puritanism was waxing powerful and could not
be assailed with impunity. They belonged to the upper and middle classes
of the society of that day, outside of the peerage. Mr. Freeman has
pointed out the importance of the change by which, after the Norman