actuated the populace of England, and the different sects who composed the first settlers of Carolina, nothing less could be expected, but that the seeds of division should be imported into that country with its earliest inhabitants. We are apt to attend chiefly to the desolating wars, or the great and surprising revolutions which happen to kingdoms in their populous and advanced state, and to pass over the events of their rise and progress as trifling and inconsiderable; but as the greatest nations upon earth have gradually sprung from such beginnings, it is no less curious and instructive to view the smaller transactions of their infant state, than the grander events of their mature age. Kingdoms in the political world, like plants in the vegetable, have their stages of rise, progress, perfection, and decline; and, in the fields of nature, it is equally pleasant to mark the buds of the spring, as the bloom of summer, or the decay of autumn. [Sidenote] America peopled in an improved age. One advantage certainly attended the various settlements in America, of which no European state can boast. Being peopled from civilized nations in an enlightened age, when records are carefully kept and faithfully preserved, the events of their rise and progress, though not so important, were equally clear as those of their more perfect state: whereas the history of the origin of eastern nations could only be transmitted to future generations by the songs of bards or oral tradition. Ignorance of geography, and the art of printing not being then invented, must have rendered the transactions of rude and barbarous ages so precarious and obscure, that if the dead of past ages were to revive, they could scarcely be able to recognize the complexion of their own time. Even in the ages preceding the invention of printing, and the happy Reformation, many events lie buried in darkness and oblivion. The small knowledge which then existed being confined to the clergy, their accounts do not merit entire credit; for the various orders of ecclesiastics at that time were too much under the influence of monkish pride and superstition, to transmit faithful memorials to posterity. [Sidenote] The first treaty with Spain respecting it.