Page:The Rise of American Civilization (Volume 1).djvu/137

 appearance of a phase in the long contest between Scot and Englishman. An eager Irishman has compiled from crumbling papers and mossy tombstones a mighty roll of O'Rourkes, O'Donahues, and O'Briens that makes colonial history resemble a glorious page in the tale of Erin's sons.

Nevertheless, when the last word is said for all the diverse elements in provincial life, certain indubitable facts obtrude themselves upon the view like giant boulders on a plain. Beyond question, the overwhelming majority of the white people in the colonies were of English descent; the arrangement of classes was English; the law which held together the whole social order was English in essence, modified, of course, but primarily English; the dominant religious institutions and modes of theology were English adaptations of Christianity; the types of formal education, the amusements, furniture, fashions, art, and domestic codes were all fundamentally English too. The language of bench and bar, pulpit and press, was English. Pamphlets and books of the epoch written in Dutch and German no doubt fill a large space on the library shelf; but in truth they are remarkable, not so much for their bulk, as for their relative insignificance when measured against the huge mountain of declamations and arguments in English that have come down from that provincial age. The list of Scotch and Irish soldiers in the revolutionary army is imposing; still more so is the register of Englishmen. Presbyterians of Pennsylvania fought well under Washington; the shot that was heard round the world was fired at Concord by a Puritan. Whether for praise, blame, or merriment, colonial America was basically English; it was governed under the auspices of the English ruling classes; its chief channels of communication with Europe ran along English routes.

The prevailing class structure by which the provincial culture of America was so largely conditioned was derived