Liberal Thought in America 127 



threw the work of colonization into the hands of 

 the Jesuits, and accordingly the history of New 

 France, while eminent for devoted bravery and 

 heroic endurance, shows scarcely a trace of liberal 

 thinking either in politics or in matters pertain- 

 ing to religion. Not with the French and Span- 

 ish portions of America, therefore, but with the 

 colonies that developed into the United States, is 

 our inquiry concerned. 



The first and most obvious consideration which 

 strikes us is that while the two centuries following 

 the discovery of America witnessed an unprece- 

 dented awakening of the European mind, yet it 

 was only with those nations that had retained self- 

 government that this intellectual awakening was 

 to come to prompt and full fruition. From the 

 British islands and the Netherlands came the kind 

 of public policy that allowed free thinking to take 

 deep root and send up a thrifty tree of liberty. 

 The planting of such seed in the spacious virgin 

 soil of the New World was doubtless the greatest 

 of all the manifold unforeseen results for which 

 Columbus opened the way. It made political free- 

 dom the strongest power on earth, and thus fa- 

 voured the attainment of that equable flexibility 

 of mind which allows the thought to play freely 

 about the facts which are laid before it. Not in 



