CHAP. XII.] ORIGIN OF FREE SCHOOLS. 159 



of New England at this moment. Of the free schools which 

 they have founded, and the plan of education adopted by them 

 for children of all sects and stations in society, they feel justly 

 proud, for it is the most original thing which America has yet 

 produced. The causes of their extraordinary success and recent 

 progress, well deserve more attention than they have usually 

 received from foreigners, especially as it seems singular at first 

 sight, and almost paradoxical, that a commonwealth founded by 

 the Puritans, whom we are accustomed to regard as the enemies 

 of polite literature and science, should now take so prominent a 

 lead as the patrons of both ; or that a sect which was so prone 

 to bibliolatry that they took their pattern and model of civil 

 government, and even their judicial code, from the Old Testament, 

 who carried their theory of the union of Church and State so far 

 as to refuse the civil franchise to all who were not in full com 

 munion with their Church, and who persecuted for a time some 

 non-conformists, even to the death, should nevertheless have set 

 an example to the world of religious toleration, and have been 

 the first to establish schools for popular education open to the 

 children of all denominations Romanist, Protestant, and Jew. 

 If any one entertains a doubt that the peculiar character 

 stamped upon the present generation of New Englanders, in 

 relation to religious and political affairs, is derived directly and 

 indisputably from their Puritan ancestors, let them refer to the 

 history of Massachusetts. According to the calculation of Ban 

 croft, the first Puritan settlers of New England are the parents 

 of one-third of the whole white population of the United States. 

 Within the first fifteen years (and there never was afterward any 

 considerable increase from England) there came over 21,200 

 persons, or 4000 families. Their descendants, he says, are now 

 (1840) not far from 4,000,000. Each family has multiplied 

 on the average to 1000 souls, and they have carried to New 

 York and Ohio, where they constitute half the population, the 

 Puritan system of free schools, which they established from the 

 beginning. When we recollect that the population of all England 

 is computed to have scarcely exceeded five millions when the 

 chief body of the Puritans first emigrated to the New World, we 



