hem. This was especially the case with
the colonists of Plymouth and Massachusetts. Many of them were educated
men, and all possessed their full share, according to their social
condition, of the knowledge and attainments of that age. The distinctive
characteristic of their settlement is the introduction of the
civilization of Europe into a wilderness, without bringing with it the
political institutions of Europe. The arts, sciences, and literature of
England came over with the settlers. That great portion of the common
law which regulates the social and personal relations and conduct of
men, came also. The jury came; the _habeas corpus_ came; the
testamentary power came; and the law of inheritance and descent came
also, except that part of it which recognizes the rights of
primogeniture, which either did not come at all, or soon gave way to the
rule of equal partition of estates among children. But the monarchy did
not come, nor the aristocracy, nor the church, as an estate of the
realm. Political institutions were to be framed anew, such as should be
adapted to the state of things. But it could not be doubtful what should
be the nature and character of these institutions. A general social
equality prevailed among the settlers, and an equality of political
rights seemed the natural, if not the necessary consequence. After forty
years of revolution, violence, and war, the people of France have placed
at the head of the fundamental instrument of their government, as the
great boon obtained by all their sufferings and sacrifices, the
declaration that all Frenchmen are equal before the law. What France
has reached only by the expenditure of so much blood and treasure, and
the perpetration of so much crime, the English colonists obtained by
simply changing their place, carrying with them the intellectual and
moral culture of Europe, and the personal and social relations to which
they were accustomed, but leaving behind their political institutions.
It has been said with much vivacity, that the felicity of the American
colonists consisted in their escape from the past. This is true so far
as respects political establishments, but no further. They brought with
them a full portion of all the riches of the past, in science, in art,
in morals, religion, and literature. The Bible came with them. And it is
not to be doubted, that to the free and universal reading of the Bible,
in that age, men were much indebted for right views of c