The American Spirit in Literature: A Chronicle of Great InterpretersPerry, Bliss
History
The American Spirit in Literature: A Chronicle of Great Interpreters
Perry, Bliss
American literature -- History and criticism
It would be easy to multiply such instances of a gradual change of view.
But beneath all the changes and all the varieties of individual behavior
in the various colonies that began to dot the seaboard, certain
qualities demanded by the new surroundings are felt in colonial life and
in colonial writings. One of these is the instinct for order, or at
least that degree of order essential to the existence of a camp. It was
not in vain that John Smith sought to correct the early laxness at
Jamestown by the stern edict: "He that will not work, neither shall he
eat." Dutch and Quaker colonies taught the same inexorable maxim of
thrift. Soon there was work enough for all, at good wages, but the
lesson had been taught. It gave Franklin's Poor Richard mottoes their
flavor of homely, experienced truth.
Order in daily life led straight to political order, just as the
equality and resourcefulness of the frontier, stimulated by isolation
from Europe, led to political independence. The pioneer learned to make
things for himself instead of sending to London for them, and by and by
he grew as impatient of waiting for a political edict from London as he
would become in waiting for a London plough. "This year," wrote one
colonist, "ye will go to complain to the Parliament, and the next year
they will send to see how it is, and the third year the government is
changed." The time was coming when no more complaints would be sent.
One of the most startling instances of this colonial instinct for
self-government is the case of Thomas Hooker. Trained in Emmanuel
College of the old Cambridge, he arrived in the new Cambridge in 1633.
He grew restless under its theocratic government, being, it was said, "a
person who when he was doing his Master's work would put a king into his
pocket." So he led the famous migration of 1636 from Massachusetts to
Hartford, and there helped to create a federation of independent towns
which made their own constitution without mentioning any king, and
became one of the corner-stones of American democracy. In May, 1638,
Hooker declared in a sermon before the General Court "that the choice of
public magistrates belongs unto the people by God's own allowance," and
"that they who have the power to appoint officers and magistrates, it is
in their power, also, to set the bounds and limitations of the power and
place into which they call them." The reason of this is: "Because the
foundation of authority is laid, firstly, in the free consent of the
people." This high discourse antedates the famous pamphlets on liberty
by Milton. It is a half-century earlier than Locke's Treatise on
Government, a century and a quarter earlier than Rousseau's Contrat
Social, and it precedes by one hundred and thirty-eight years the
American Declaration of Independence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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