Spite of internecine struggle and transatlantic intrigue, New England walked steadily on in the path towards material prosperity. It was inevitable; for the parents of success were within her borders: essential godliness was in her right hand, and the habit of thrift was in her left. It is very probable that prosperity was helped instead of hindered by the agitation which was begotten of the official acts of the colonial government. The stir served to keep Christendom agog for the latest news from America. “What are these Pilgrims now at?” was the inquiry incessantly on every lip. Thus it was that the name and action of New England became as prominently familiar in the _salons_ of the ultramontanists in Europe, and in the club-rooms of the riotous cavaliers, as in the humble dwellings of the godly Puritans. Besides, agitation in its turn begot progress. Where there is silence there is death. If the Alps, piled in cold, still sublimity, are the emblem of fat and contented despotism, the ocean is the symbol of democracy; for it is pure and useful only because never motionless. At all events, the progress of New England was unique and unprecedented. “_Nec minor ab exordio_,” says Cotton Mather, “_nec major incrementis ulla_.”[882] Never was any thing more lowly in inception or more mighty in increase. In 1635, twenty ships dropped anchor in Boston and Plymouth harbors;[883] and in that single year three thousand new settlers were added to the Pilgrim colonies.[884] Men came over fast and “Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks In Vallambrosa, where the Etruscan shades, High overarched, imbower.” And these, like their predecessors, were of “the best.”[885] With them landed an illustrious _trio_—Hugh Peters, the younger Winthrop, and Sir Harry Vane.[886] The fiery Peters came from one exile to another; for he had been pastor of an English church at Rotterdam. He was an enlightened republican, public spirited, prodigiously energetic, and eloquent, already endowed with those high qualities which soon afterwards pushed him into prominence in the English civil war as the coadjutor of Cromwell, the jailor of Charles I., and an echoer of the regicidal verdict.[887] During his seven years’ sojourn in New England, Hugh Peters was settled at Salem as the successor of Roger Williams.[888] At once his restless and various activity bubbled over into works of utility.[889] He was minister, he was politician, he was factotum. He saw the commercial capabilities of America, and set himself to develop them. He “went from place to place,” says Winthrop, “laboring both publicly and privately to raise men up to a public frame of spirit, and so prevailed, that he procured a good sum of money to set on foot a systematic fishing business.”[890]