d their
social condition and their laws--America the only country in which the
starting-point of a great people has been clearly observable--In what
respects all who emigrated to British America were similar--In what they
differed--Remark applicable to all Europeans who established themselves
on the shores of the New World--Colonization of Virginia--Colonization
of New England--Original character of the first inhabitants of New
England--Their arrival--Their first laws--Their social contract--Penal
code borrowed from the Hebrew legislation--Religious fervor--Republican
spirit--Intimate union of the spirit of religion with the spirit of
liberty.

Origin Of The Anglo-Americans, And Its Importance In Relation To Their
Future Condition.

After the birth of a human being his early years are obscurely spent in
the toils or pleasures of childhood. As he grows up the world receives
him, when his manhood begins, and he enters into contact with his
fellows. He is then studied for the first time, and it is imagined
that the germ of the vices and the virtues of his maturer years is then
formed. This, if I am not mistaken, is a great error. We must begin
higher up; we must watch the infant in its mother's arms; we must see
the first images which the external world casts upon the dark mirror
of his mind; the first occurrences which he witnesses; we must hear the
first words which awaken the sleeping powers of thought, and stand by
his earliest efforts, if we would understand the prejudices, the habits,
and the passions which will rule his life. The entire man is, so to
speak, to be seen in the cradle of the child.

The growth of nations presents something analogous to this: they all
bear some marks of their origin; and the circumstances which accompanied
their birth and contributed to their rise affect the whole term of their
being. If we were able to go back to the elements of states, and to
examine the oldest monuments of their history, I doubt not that we
should discover the primal cause of the prejudices, the habits, the
ruling passions, and, in short, of all that constitutes what is called
the national character; we should then find the explanation of certain
customs which now seem at variance with the prevailing manners; of such
laws as conflict with established principles; and of such incoherent
opinions as are here and there to be met with in society, like those
fragments of broken chains which we sometimes see hanging from