INTRODUCTORY DISCOURSE. i 



grasp, yet that their cupidity could be amply gratified by the abundant 

 products of the soil. The settlement of this country was thus made with 

 a view to the acquisition of wealth ; knowledge was out of the question. 

 The attachments of tbe emigrants, like their origin, were exotic ; the 

 land of their adoption was considered as secondary and inferior, in every 

 respect, to the land of their nativity ; and their anxious eyes were con- 

 stantly directed to the period when they could return to their native soil 

 laden with the bounties of the new world. This country was also planted 

 at a time when the intellectual world was involved in Cimmerian dark- 

 oess. The scholastic philosophy was the reigning knowledge of the 

 times; a philosophy ef words and notions, conversant only in logical 

 distinctions, abstractions, and subtleties ; which left real science wholly 

 uncultivated to hunt after occult qualities, abstract notions, and objects 

 of impertinent curiosity. This system, which was founded by the com- 

 mentators on Aristotle, who were called profound, irrefragable, and an- 

 gelic doctors, corrupted every department of knowledge and maintained 

 supremacy for several centuries. The stagyrite was even considered 

 as entitled to the honours of an evangelist ; and Melanethon complains 

 that his ethics were read to the people, instead of the gospel, in sacred 

 assemblies. In this great serbonian bog the human mind lay ingulfed, 

 entranced, and bewildered for ages; and the glimmering rays of light 

 which the peripatetic philosophy shed over the world, were confined to 

 the cloister and the college. At this period this country was first settled 

 by the countrymen indeed of Erasmus and of Grotius ; but the works of 

 Erasmus were locked up in latin ; Grotius was scarcely known, and few 

 of our ancestors were acquainted with the first elements of knowledge. 

 They settled here under the auspices of a dutch west-india company, 

 and when the province was surrendered to the english, in 1674, no advan- 

 tages resulted to the cause of knowledge. Charles II. was a witty sen- 

 sualist James II. was a contracted bigot William of Orange was a 

 mere soldier. The constellation of intellectual luminaries which shone 

 in the augustan age of England diffused but little light across the Atlan- 

 tic : the two first of the Brunswick kings had neither knowledge them- 

 selves, nor did they value it in others ; and with the third dynasty we 

 measured swords, and a severance of the empire ensued. 



There is something in the nature of provincial government which 

 tends to engender faction, and to prevent the expansion of intellect. It 

 inevitably creates two distinct interests ; one regarding the colony as 

 subservient in every respect to the mother country, and the other rising 

 up in opposition to this assumption. The governor and principal ma- 

 gistrates, who derive their appointments from an extrinsic source, 

 teel independent of the people over whom they are placed. The ope- 

 ration of this principle has been powerfully experienced in our territo- 

 rial governments, which have been the constant theatre of intestine di- 

 visions : and when the human luted is called away from th< interest of 



