Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/215

Rh commonwealth and their church; they formed laws, established schools, and all that could give stability and strength to a human community. They wielded the sword with one hand and guided the plough with the other. Amid increasing jeopardy of life, they in particular reflected on the welfare of their successors, and framed laws which every one must admire for their sagacity, purity, and humanity. Even the animal creation was placed under the protection of these laws, and punishment ordained for the mistreatment of the beast.

During the first year their sufferings and hardships were extreme. “I have seen men,” writes an eye-witness, “stagger by reason of faintness for want of food.”

The harvest of the third year was abundant, and now, instead of, as hitherto, each one labouring for the common benefit, each colonist worked alone for his own family and his own advantage. This gave an impulse to labour and to good management. And when they had lived through the time of want, a time of prosperity commenced, and the colony increased rapidly in power and extent. In a few years it was said of it “that you might live there from one year's end to another without seeing a drunkard, hearing an oath, or meeting with a beggar.” They who survived the first period of suffering lived to be extremely old.

It is not to be wondered at, that from a parentage strong as this, should be derived a race destined to become a great people. Other colonies more to the south, whose morals were more lax, and whose purpose of life was of a lower range, had either died out or maintained merely a feeble existence amid warfare with the natives, suffering from the climate and encompassed with difficulties. The Puritans, on the contrary, with their lofty aims of life, their steadfast faith and pure manners, became the conquerors of the desert and the lawgivers of the New World. Nor do I know of any nation which ever had a