By name, local position, and character, one of these communities of
freemen stands forth as the most conspicuous representative of this
antagonism,--Liberty and Absolutism, New England and New France. The
one was the offspring of a triumphant government; the other, of an
oppressed and fugitive people: the one, an unflinching champion of the
Roman Catholic reaction; the other, a vanguard of the Reform. Each
followed its natural laws of growth, and each came to its natural
result. Vitalized by the principles of its foundation, the Puritan
commonwealth grew apace. New England was preeminently the land of
material progress. Here the prize was within every man's reach: patient
industry need never doubt its reward; nay, in defiance of the four
Gospels, assiduity in pursuit of gain was promoted to the rank of a
duty, and thrift and godliness were linked in equivocal wedlock.
Politically she was free; socially she suffered from that subtle and
searching oppression which the dominant opinion of a free community may
exercise over the members who compose it. As a whole, she grew upon the
gaze of the world, a signal example of expansive energy; but she has not
been fruitful in those salient and striking forms of character which
often give a dramatic life to the annals of nations far less prosperous.
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