[Sidenote: Sources of American government.]

In comparison with other men of their time, the Americans were
distinguished by the possession of new political and social ideas, which
were destined to be the foundation of the American commonwealth. One of
the strongest and most persistent elements in national development has
been that inheritance of political traditions and usages which the new
settlers brought with them. Among the more rigid sects of New England the
example of the Hebrew theocracy, as set forth in the Scriptures, had great
influence on government; they were even more powerfully affected by the
ideas of the Christian commonwealth held by the Protestant theologians,
and particularly by John Calvin. The residence of the Plymouth settlers in
the Netherlands, and the later conquest of the Dutch colonies, had brought
the Americans into contact with the singularly wise and free institutions
of the Dutch. To some degree the colonial conception of government had
been affected by the English Commonwealth of 1649, and the English
Revolution of 1688. The chief source of the political institutions of the
colonies was everywhere the institutions with which they were familiar at
the time of the emigration from England. It is not accurate to assert that
American government is the offspring of English government. It is nearer
the truth to say that in the middle of the seventeenth century the Anglo-
Saxon race divided into two branches, each of which developed in its own
way the institutions which it received from the parent stock. From the
foundation of the colonies to 1789 the development of English government
had little influence on colonial government. So long as the colonies were
dependent they were subject to English regulation and English legal
decisions, but their institutions developed in a very different direction.