Page:Democracy in America (Reeve, v. 1).djvu/70

 middle and lower orders of which the history of the world had as yet furnished no complete example.

In this general uniformity several striking differences were, however, discernible, which it is necessary to point out. Two branches may be distinguished in the Anglo-American family which have hitherto grown up without entirely commingling; the one in the South, the other in the North.

Virginia received the first English colony; the emigrants took possession of it in 1607. The idea that mines of gold and silver are the sources of national wealth was at that time singularly prevalent in Europe; a fatal delusion, which has done more to impoverish the nations which adopted it, and has cost more lives in America, than the united influence of war and bad laws. The men sent to Virginia were seekers of gold, adventurers without resources and without character, whose turbulent and restless spirit endangered the infant colony and rendered its progress uncertain. The artisans and agriculturists arrived afterwards; and although they were a more moral and orderly race