after having studied its history, we shall remain perfectly convinced
that not an opinion, not a custom, not a law, I may even say not an
event, is upon record which the origin of that people will not explain.
The readers of this book will find the germ of all that is to follow in
the present chapter, and the key to almost the whole work.

The emigrants who came, at different periods to occupy the territory now
covered by the American Union differed from each other in many respects;
their aim was not the same, and they governed themselves on different
principles. These men had, however, certain features in common, and
they were all placed in an analogous situation. The tie of language is
perhaps the strongest and the most durable that can unite mankind. All
the emigrants spoke the same tongue; they were all offsets from the same
people. Born in a country which had been agitated for centuries by the
struggles of faction, and in which all parties had been obliged in
their turn to place themselves under the protection of the laws, their
political education had been perfected in this rude school, and they
were more conversant with the notions of right and the principles of
true freedom than the greater part of their European contemporaries. At
the period of their first emigrations the parish system, that fruitful
germ of free institutions, was deeply rooted in the habits of the
English; and with it the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people had
been introduced into the bosom of the monarchy of the House of Tudor.

The religious quarrels which have agitated the Christian world were then
rife. England had plunged into the new order of things with headlong
vehemence. The character of its inhabitants, which had always been
sedate and reflective, became argumentative and austere. General
information had been increased by intellectual debate, and the mind
had received a deeper cultivation. Whilst religion was the topic of