Letter of Dec. 8, 1629; _Ibid._, vol. VIII, p. 427. Footnote 318: _Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings_, Series I, vol. VIII, p. 420. The wording is slightly different in the version in R. C. Winthrop, _J. Winthrop_, vol. I, p. 327. Footnote 319: _Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings_, Series I, vol. XII, p. 238. Footnote 320: Letter of Jan. 15, 1630; R. C. Winthrop, _J. Winthrop_, vol. I, p. 366. His judgment regarding the ending of the opportunity for a public career for such as himself in England was obviously wrong, as events developed there. The England which retained a Pym, a Hampden, an Eliot, and a Cromwell, may well have offered scope for the talents of a Winthrop. As our eyes are usually fastened on this side of the water, we are apt to think of the Pilgrims, Puritans, and other immigrants as starting their careers by coming here. We rarely consider them in the light of leaving behind them other possible careers in England. It is no disparagement of the courage with which they faced the wilderness, to think of them, for a moment, as Englishmen, abandoning their place in the struggle at home, and to consider the type of mind which thus preferred to exchange the simplifications of unpeopled America for the complexities of the situation in England. Is it, perhaps, altogether fanciful, to attribute, in slight part, that deeply ingrained feeling of Americans, that they wish to have nothing to do with the problems of the world at large, to this choice of the founders in abandoning their place in the struggles of Europe for a more untrammeled career on a small provincial stage? Winthrop's reasons have been thus dwelt upon, because, in the motives given by him who was the purest, gentlest, and broadest-minded of all who were to guide the destinies of the Bay Colony, we presumably find the highest of those which animated any of the men who sought its shores. As we descend the scale of character, the religious incentives narrow and disappear, as does also the desire for honorable public service, and the economic factor alone remains.