141 



try still endures, and holds triumphant sway over the social and civil 

 institutions of our laud. We admire the spirit of adventure Avhich 

 settled the other American colonies ; but we bow before the stern re- 

 solve which settled Plymouth. We may envy the " calm and monoto- 

 nous ease" which Wouter Van T wilier secured for the Dutch colonists 

 of New York; we may repose for a time in the liberal indiflereuce 

 which opened the mouth of the Hudson to the flying Swedes, and 

 Walloons, and Waldenses, and Huguenots, and English, and Holland- 

 ers, and converted the harbor of Xew York into a I'efuge and not a 

 nationality; we may study with interest the jealousy and suspicion 

 which created for the Dutch colonies a dislocated unity, and perhaps 

 sowed the seed, from which a noxious crop of reservations and dis- 

 tractions has sprung up in our couutrj'; but we admire and believe 

 in that faith in God and a good government, which inspired the Puri- 

 tan to establish a popular civil system upon a substantial foundation, 

 and gave us in reality " a church without a bishop, and a State with- 

 out a kiug." Morally and physically the Puritan grew strong, and it 

 has been well said of the early colonial period of New York that •' it 

 served but iudiflerently to prepare the (Dutch) colonists for their im- 

 pending contentions, with men whose frames and spirits had been 

 braced by the. discipline of those severe trials that befell the first 

 planters of New England." 



Compared also with the various other American colonies, how vital 

 and enduring Plymouth appears ! Of their settlements hardly any- 

 thing remains which would call forth a pilgrimage ; of their govern- 

 ments no valuable principle has been handed down to us ; of their 

 religious fervor and devotion, we have no record to command our ad- 

 miration or reverence. Not to Jamestown, not to New York, not to 

 the Carolinas, do men turn their steps in adoration. Not in this day 

 can the long repose of the Hollander be broken, and men be taught 

 that New Amsterdam is a rival of Plymouth in histoi'ic greatness, sig- 

 nificance and renown. History provides its most brilliant pages to 

 those events which operate as causes, not to those which follow as a 

 consequence. And so in the annals of popular representative govern- 

 ment, the compact made on board the Mayflower outshines the Union 

 of the Dutch colonies, and the blows struck at Concord and Bunker 

 Hill, amid trial and disaster, have a significance unknown to the suc- 

 cessful endeavor at Saratoga, which owes its name and its fame to 

 the fact that the Puritan of Massachusetts would not submit to oppres- 

 sion and wi'ong. 



While the Puritan believed in civil freedom and individual rights, 

 he also believed in a, definite form of religion and government, to aid 

 man in resisting temptation and developing his moral nature, and to 

 aid him also in discharging his civil service wisely and faithfully. In- 



