Page:The Rise of American Civilization (Volume 1).djvu/138

 in the main from the mother country. Although it is sometimes imagined, on the basis of schoolbook fictions, that the colonies were local democracies formed on the pure principles of a New World philosophy and founded on substantial economic equality, the facts of the case lend little color to that view. In reality, by the colonizing process, the middle orders of England―landed gentry of the minor rank, merchants, and yeomen―with their psychology and social values were reproduced in a new environment.

At home these classes had carried society forward on the long road from feudalism to the modern age; in America, freed from the immediate pressure of a titled aristocracy and clerical hierarchy, they advanced rapidly ahead of their English contemporaries in the degree of their sovereignty over matters of law, religion, intellect, and æsthetic interest. Every colony had this class heritage developed into a well-articulated scheme of social subordination. It is true that the status of the ruling element was not as plainly marked by legal signs as in the mother country and that the gates of entry were slightly more ajar but its grip upon industry and local politics was no less secure.

In seaboard New England the dominant order was composed principally of rich merchants, their dependents, and advocates―a few of them the offspring of English gentry. Though it rested a little lower in the social firmament than the official families of royal governors, distinctions in dress, houses, equipages, and manners separated it widely from the farmers, artisans, and servile elements of the population. "Most Boston merchants," wrote a scion of later days, "owned slaves as house servants and bought and sold them like other merchandise."

Of course titled persons in old England sniffed as they caught the smell of tar and salt fish on the garments of the mercantile order of the Back Bay but sturdy Puritans did not worry about the snub. They even boasted of the smell. "Our ancestors came not here for religion. Their