All the British colonies had then a great degree of similarity at the
epoch of their settlement. All of them, from their first beginning,
seemed destined to witness the growth, not of the aristocratic liberty
of their mother-country, but of that freedom of the middle and lower
orders of which the history of the world had as yet furnished no
complete example.

In this general uniformity several striking differences were however
discernible, which it is necessary to point out. Two branches may be
distinguished in the Anglo-American family, which have hitherto grown
up without entirely commingling; the one in the South, the other in the
North.

Virginia received the first English colony; the emigrants took
possession of it in 1607. The idea that mines of gold and silver are
the sources of national wealth was at that time singularly prevalent in
Europe; a fatal delusion, which has done more to impoverish the nations
which adopted it, and has cost more lives in America, than the united
influence of war and bad laws. The men sent to Virginia *a were seekers
of gold, adventurers, without resources and without character, whose
turbulent and restless spirit endangered the infant colony, *b and
rendered its progress uncertain. The artisans and agriculturists arrived
afterwards; and, although they were a more moral and orderly race of
men, they were in nowise above the level of the inferior classes in
England. *c No lofty conceptions, no intellectual system, directed the
foundation of these new settlements. The colony was scarcely established
when slavery was introduced, *d and this was the main circumstance which
has exercised so prodigious an influence on the character, the laws, and
all the future prospects of the South. Slavery, as we shall afterwards
show, dishonors labor; it introduces idleness into society, and with