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Peru, were the greatest improvements. There, immense multitudes of people crowded their villages and filled their fields. Countries of great extent were connected together under one regular plan of government and system of laws. Cities with an astonishing population were to be seen, full of splendor and riches, of order and ornaments. Rulers were well informed, and felt paternal regards for their people, being constantly employed in rendering them secure, prosperous and happy. The empire of laws was, in some measure, established.

The authority of religion was recognized, and its beneficial influences widely extended. The arts essential to life received attention, and the dawn of what is ornamental began to appear. They knew how to make use of visible signs for ideas, and a few steps more would have led them to the invention of alphabetical writing. Morals were respected, and their parental instructions were worthy of Greece or Rome. The growing arts must soon have led to the cultivation of the sciences, between which there is a near affinity and an inseperable connection. Gold and silver vessels were uncommonly numerous, and they began to enjoy the elegances of life. Iron, without which barbarous nations must in a great degree continue such, and a refined people soon become barbarous, was with them, as with all savages, the great desideratum, destitute of which most valuable of all metallic substances, nature soon puts her veto on all human improvement, saying, "hitherto shalt thou go, and no further." At least, their prosperity was already great, and daily increasing, when the "cruel spoiler came" with all their woes and ruin in his train.

CHAPTER II.

New England discovered. Middle sections of America fertile. Soil of New England poor. Colonies fail. Settlements difficult. Persecution. Reformation in England. Puritans. Emigrate to Holland Afterwards to America. Government established. Treachery to the natives. Pestilence. English attacked. Sickness. First engage

ment with the natives.

THE West Indies and the continent of America had not long been known to the Europeans, before New England was discovered. Seeking a passage from England to China by a nearer and safer route, John Cabot came to Labrador, proceeded to the 47th degree of north latitude, and on his return traversed along the coast to Newfoundland and NewEngland as far as to East Florida. But although NewEngland was discovered in the summer of 1497, yet 123 years rolled away before any actual settlement was affected. This section of North America was revisited in 1605 by Capt. Weymouth, who was also in search of the supposed and long sought passage to India. He entered one of the largest rivers in the province of Maine where he discovered a number of the natives. He carried 5 of them with him to England.

While the settlement of the middle and southern states proceeded with great success by the influx of Europeans, after several of the first unsuccessful attempts, adventurers being determined on a sudden accumulation of wealth, and filled with golden dreams which are seldom realized, that of New-England was destined to advance with a slower pace. The West-Indian isles were overflowing sources of easy as well as of inexhaustible wealth. Rich in soil, interrupted by no wintry cold, with a harvest ever ready, they yielded productions suited to the taste of the luxurious, as well as useful to every class of men. These opened new sources of trade, awakened the spirit of enterprise and offered great rewards to the adventurer. The gold and silver mines of Mexico and Peru, with rivers running over golden sands, and

with coasts and countries abounding in whatever is deemed most valuable among men of the world, were inviting objects, which neither curiosity could despise, nor avarice easily resist.

But New-England held out no such splendid objects of temptation. Its soil on the sea coast is broken, rocky and barren. Its first appearance must have been peculiarly uninviting to strangers in a strange land. The ground depended on the cultivator for a richness not its own. Its climate is still more forbidding since it could not be meliorated either by human ingenuity or industry.

As if to baffle the judgment of men, under all these natural disadvantages, New-England was destined to become, however uninviting at first, one of the brightest spots in America. It is a proof and a specimen, how much of knowledge, wealth and happiness may be produced by order, perseverence, salutary regulations and pious institutions. The middle regions of America are enriched by her natural productions and mines; but New-England by her arts, her sciences and her virtues. She aims to ascend from the mute elements of nature to act on the intellectual and moral system, which is so ennobling to man and so accordant with heaven. This can make a desert blossom, and convert a bleak and barren region almost into the primitive Eden of purity and enjoyment.

The Plymouth company sent out two ships in 1606, to make further discoveries. The favorable report they made induced a colony of 100 persons to settle the next year at the mouth of Kennebec. But the severity of the winter following, the hardships incident to a new country, and a great loss of property disposed them to return to England the first opportunity. The grand design of a plantation was therefore laid aside.

The English and the French, however, continued to make voyages to the coast, to procure fish, or to trade in furs with the natives. The planting of colonies was not then an object of much interest. The advantages, which commerce might derive from them, were not foreseen. The poor were incompetent to settling a new world, and the rich were well satisfied with the ease and the plenty of the old. Even whole corporations felt the expenses to be great and the prospects discouraging. Gorges and Mason, after having expended

more than 160,000 dollars, quitted forever the design of a settlement in New England.

In a removal to this country, many things were forbidding. The distance from relations, the fears of crossing the wide Atlantic, the expenses of a settlement, the inevitable hardships of a new country, and vicinity to savages, added to the ideas of the many social and religious connections which must be dissolved, all these considerations could not fail to create feelings, which were not easily to be overcome.

The objects of interest were few. The fur trade and the fisheries were the most lucrative. As for social enjoyments and sacred privileges, they were not yet in existence. Even in the more congenial regions of Virginia, they were as yet struggling for life; and many, having despaired of ever finding even comfort, had returned home. Colonies had failed as often as they had been attempted at first, while each new failure added to the former accumulated stock of despair. Nor did it appear, that human means would ever accomplish a design, which had so often been attempted in vain.

What individuals of great enterprise, what corporations with united wealth and what a powerful nation by liberal patronage could not accomplish, it was reserved for religious zeal to effect. Great good was made to arise out of evil, and the settlement of New England is owing to the effects of bigotry and persecution. Among the professing christians of that age, there was very little of that charity, which, being the essence of christian perfection, is greater than either faith or hope. They conducted as if intolerance and blind zeal constituted the spirit of their divine master. Had rancor and malice been duties toward those who differed in speculative opinions, they would have been the most exemplary and truly zealous disciples imaginable. Each sect denied to all others that liberty of conscience, which all had an equal right to enjoy.

A spirit for investigating religious subjects had been greatly increased by the reformation in England in 1534. The vices of the clergy, the abuses of the proper authority of religion, the arrogant claims of the popes, and the attempted subjugation both of the property and of the consciences of the people to the will and to the emoluments of the conductors of the church, at length opened the eyes of men. The dark ages of a thousand years were numbered with those which were past. Men began to think for themselves, and

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of course began to find out the truth. A flood of light, as well upon religious as upon literary subjects, was the natural consequence of free inquiry. Wickcliffe, Erasmus and Melancton were the lights of that memorable era. Luther and Calvin had daring spirits, and wrought still greater wonders, completing what had been so gloriously begun, till the system of aged errors was overturned, or at least received a wound, from which it was never to recover.

But everything on earth approaching perfection is usually of short duration. At the close of the 16th century, the spirit of the reformation had begun to languish, and new errors had crept in, or old ones had revived. The more zealous saw that the work of reformation fell very far short of their wishes, as it did of their ideas of primitive purity. They abhorred every thing, which bore the least resemblance of the papal church. Nor could they rest easy, while they saw surplices, printed prayers, creeds, bishops, altars, and pompous ceremonies, contrary to that simplicity which there is in Christ. The plainness of their own dress, the seriousness of their deportment, the piety of their conversation, their dislike of the inventions of men in religion, and their desire to promote scripture purity," gave them the name of "Puritans," and from these descended the inhabitants of New-England.

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As soon as men began to think for themselves, it was certain that different degrees of information would be productive of different shades of opinion. In every quarter, numerous denominations arose, all growing indeed out of one system of revelation, but diverse from each other in less essential points, or mere forms of godliness. Men, who do not think profoundly and still easily form attachments, often regard forms more than they do the essence of things. Zeal soon begot bigotry, and intolerance soon grew into persecution in proportion as it required power. The protestants deemed it genuine catholicism to separate from the church of Rome: but no sooner was their own power established than they deemed it damnable heresy to separate from the church of England. Cruelties were soon inflicted upon every class of separatists, and disabilities are continued down to the present day even in the most enlightened nation in Europe. They felt a reluctance that others should exercise that liberty of conscience, which they wished to monop

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