Although we deny that Jefferson was indebted to France for his political system, it cannot be claimed that he was the author of it. He himself used to assert, that the scheme of a limited and decentralized government was produced by the events which caused the settlement of the country and the subsequent union of the colonies. The emigration to America was stimulated by the great Protestant and Catholic dispute which occupied Europe nearly two centuries, and during which time the original thirteen colonies were founded. The sentiment of religious freedom was the active principle of all the alliances, wars, intrigues, and adventures of that stormy period. The rights of conscience were maintained, in defiance of the rack and the stake. They were stubbornly asserted in regard to the smallest matters. Lines of separation, so fine as hardly to be perceptible, were defended to the last. The Catholic was not more irreconcilably opposed to the Protestant, than the Lutheran to the Quaker, or the Puritan to the Baptist. Men who differed merely about the meaning of a single passage of Scripture thought each other unfit to sit at the same table. The immigrants were exiles. By the conditions under which they acted, as being from the defeated party, and as being among those whom defeat did not subdue, they must have had the enthusiasm of their time in its most earnest form. Each man came here intent upon his right to worship God in his own way. _That_ he could never forget. It had been impressed upon him by everything which can affect the understanding or touch the heart of man,--by the memory of success and defeat,--by his own sufferings and the martyrdom of his brethren,--by Bunyan's fable and by Milton's song.