ent very inadequately felt in
France. [Footnote f: Ibid., p. 78.]

[Footnote g: Ibid., p. 49.]

[Footnote h: See "Hutchinson's History," vol. i. p. 455.]

[Footnote i: Code of 1650, p. 86.]

[Footnote j: Ibid., p. 40.]

But it is by the attention it pays to Public Education that the original
character of American civilization is at once placed in the clearest
light. "It being," says the law, "one chief project of Satan to keep
men from the knowledge of the Scripture by persuading from the use of
tongues, to the end that learning may not be buried in the graves of
our forefathers, in church and commonwealth, the Lord assisting our
endeavors. . . ." *k Here follow clauses establishing schools in every
township, and obliging the inhabitants, under pain of heavy fines, to
support them. Schools of a superior kind were founded in the same manner
in the more populous districts. The municipal authorities were bound to
enforce the sending of children to school by their parents; they were
empowered to inflict fines upon all who refused compliance; and in case
of continued resistance society assumed the place of the parent, took
possession of the child, and deprived the father of those natural rights
which he used to so bad a purpose. The reader will undoubtedly have
remarked the preamble of these enactments: in America religion is the
road to knowledge, and the observance of the divine laws leads man to
civil freedom.

[Footnote k: Ibid., p. 90.]

If, after having cast a rapid glance over the state of American society
in 1650, we turn to the condition of Europe, and more especially to that
of the Continent, at the same period, we cannot fail to be struck
with astonishment. On the Continent of Europe, at the beginning of the
seventeenth century, absolute monarchy had everywhere triumphed over the
ruins of the oligarchical and feudal liberties of the Middle Ages. Never
were the notions of right more completely confounded than in the midst
of the splendor and literature of Europe; never was there less political
activity among the people; never were the principles of true freedom
less widely circulated; and at that very time those principles, which
were scorned or unknown by the nations of Europe, were proclaimed in
the deserts of the New World, and were accepted as the future creed of
a great people. The boldest theories of the human reason were put into
practice by a community so humble that not a statesman condescended to