nor patronage, and with the purpose not of finding gold or making
fortunes, but of establishing a home wherein to dwell in perpetuity--which
was handicapped by the abject poverty of its members, and by the
severities of a climate till then unknown--this enterprise was found to
hold the elements of success from the start, and it steadily increased in
power and influence. It suffered from time to time from the tyranny of
royal governors and the ignorance or malice of absentee statesmanship; but
nothing could extinguish or corrupt it; on the contrary, it went "slowly
broadening down, from precedent to precedent," until, when the moment of
supreme trial came to the Thirteen Colonies, the descendants of the
Pilgrims and the Puritans, and the men who had absorbed their ideas, put
New England in the van of patriotism and progress. It is a noble record,
and a pregnant example to all friends of freedom.

In suggestive contrast with this was the Jamestown enterprise. As we have
seen, this colony was saved from almost immediate extinction solely by the
genius and energy of one man, whom his fellow members had at first tried
to exclude altogether from their councils and companionship. Belonging to
a class socially higher and presumably more intelligent than the Pilgrims,
and continually furnished with supplies from the Company in England, they
were unable during twelve years to make any independent stand against
disaster. In a climate which was as salubrious as that of New England was
rigorous, and with a soil as fertile as any in the world, they dwindled
and starved, and their dearest wish was to return to England. They were
saved at last (as we shall presently see) by two things; first, by the
discovery of the value of tobacco as an export, and of its usefulness as a
currency for the internal trade of the country; and secondly, and much
more, by the Charter of 1618, which gave the people the privilege of
helping to make their own laws. That year marked the beginning of civil
liberty in America; but what it had taken the Jamestown colonists twelve