This early Scottish influence, conveyed through both theory and example, was especially potent with the founders of New England, the Puritans in Old England, and the Pilgrims who, in the Dutch Republic, received tremendous reinforcement. In philosophy--which is greater than armies or navies--to no other land or people were the beginners of the American nation more indebted than to the Scotch. This may be said, not only in the departments of political and ecclesiastical science, but equally so in the domain of pure thought. The Scottish philosophy of realism and common sense dominated largely our infant colleges. It swayed the thinking and shaped the conduct of our public men in bar and pulpit. It was translated into action by the leaders of the Revolution. So long as the Scots were able to hold their own against the tyrannical Stuart kings of England, and even while they were pouring by the tens of thousands into Ulster, making a new nation in northern Ireland,--the old land of the Scots,--there were but few emigrants, from Scotland direct, to the Atlantic Coast colonies. Even these were sporadic and mostly by way of Holland; but when the oppressive economic measures of Parliament ruined the Scotch-Irish industries, there began an emigration of people of Scottish birth or descent which numerically excelled any previous colonial accession to America. Whereas, the emigration from England to New England, mostly between 1630 and 1650, had added but twenty thousand souls to the northeastern seacoast region, the Scotch-Irish migration, lasting fifty years, added fifty thousand hardy, intelligent, thrifty people who settled in the interior and on the frontiers. They not only served as a barrier against the savages, but they developed the soil of the valleys and built their towns on the highlands and the watersheds. After the accession of the Hanoverian dynasty and the breaking-up of the old economic and social conditions in Scotland, there poured into America a flood of Scottish islanders, Lowlanders, and Highlanders from Scotland direct, numbering tens of thousands. From this multitude of the Scots and Scotch-Irish, scattering widely and settling mostly on the frontiers and developing virgin land, came forth, at the call of the Continental Congress, one third of the American army of freedom in the Revolution. Throughout our history none have excelled these lovers of ordered freedom in safeguarding human rights and in illustrating loyalty to moral convictions and public duty. The number of able men of Scottish descent who have filled the highest offices of honor and trust in the learned professions, in pulpit, bar, bench, in chairs of science, or as governors, presidents, officers of the army and navy, and in every line of human achievement, is not excelled, if equalled, by those of any other stock in the American blend of nationalities.