was of the elect, [Footnote: Wendell, Cotton Mather, 6.] was
accompanied by an almost equal anxiety concerning the conduct of his
neighbors. The community life of New England emphasized this trait.

Tudor, who was not friendly to the ideals of the "land of steady
habits," criticized "the narrowing influence of local policy," and
lamented the "sort of habitual, pervading police, made up of
Calvinistic inquisition and village scrutiny" in Connecticut.
[Footnote: Tudor, Letters on the Eastern States (ed. of 1821), 60.]
Not to be one's brother's keeper and not to assent to the dictates
of community sentiment were indications of moral laxity. This long
training in theological inquiry, this continued emphasis upon
conduct, and this use of community sentiment as a means of enforcing
certain moral and political ideals, led the New-Englander to war
with opposing conceptions wherever he went.

A test of the ideals of New England is found in the attitude of
those who spread into new regions. The migrating Yankee was a
reformer. A considerable proportion of the New-Englanders who left
the section were "come-outers" in religion as in politics; many of
the Vermonters and the pioneers who went west were radicals. But the
majority of these dissenters from the established order carried with
them a body of ideas regarding conduct and a way of looking at the
world that were deeply influenced by their old Puritan training. If,
indeed, they revolted from the older type of Calvinism in the freer
air of a new country, they were, by this sudden release from
restraint, likely to develop "isms" of their own, which revealed the
strong underlying forces of religious thinking. Lacking the
restraining influence of the old Congregational system, some of them
contented themselves with placing greater emphasis upon emotional