New England men were brave and liberty-loving, stoutly withstanding any attempt on the part of the home government to curtail their rights as Englishmen or hamper their progress. They were not always successful in their resistance, but were vastly more independent than their French and Spanish neighbors; and the principles of popular government were nowhere else, even in the English colonies, so successfully put in practice. They were hard-working, frugal, God-fearing, educated, and virtuous men. They sprang from a high quality of pure English stock, and they had raised indeed "choice grain." They founded an enduring empire amid obstacles that two and a half centuries ago might well have seemed appalling. The creed of the Puritans was harsh, their view of life gloomy, and their church intolerant; but their mission, as they conceived it, was a serious one, and the stormy experience of Rhode Island was not calculated elsewhere to encourage looseness in religious thinking. They were enterprising and thrifty to a high degree. In commerce, domestic trade, manufactures, and political sagacity, for nearly two centuries New England easily led all the American colonies. The nation owes much to the wisdom, the energy, and the fortitude of New England colonial statesmen; and New England institutions are to-day in large measure characteristics of the American commonwealth. CHAPTER IX. THE COLONIZATION OF THE MIDDLE COLONIES (1609-1700). 82. References. Bibliographies.--Larned, _Literature of American History_, 92-100; Andrews, _Colonial Self-Government_, ch. xx.; Avery, II. 417-421, 438-444, III. 413-418, 430-432, 443-445; Winsor, III. 411-420, 449-456, 495-516, IV. 409-442, 488-502; Channing and Hart, _Guide_, §§ 104-108. Historical Maps.--Nos. 1, 2, and 3, this volume (_Epoch Maps_, Nos. 1, 2, 3); Winsor, as above. General Accounts.--Fiske, _Dutch and Quaker Colonies_; Doyle, _Colonies_, IV.; Lodge, _Colonies_, chs. ix.-xvi.; Channing, _United States_, I. chs. xvi., xvii., II. chs. ii., iv., v., vii.; Avery, II. chs. iv., xi., xii., III. chs. iv.-vi., xv., xvii., xviii., xxvi.; Andrews, as above, chs. v.-viii., xi., xii.; Winsor, III. chs. x.-xii., IV. chs. viii., ix.