I confess I do not find in our people, with all their education, a fair share of originality of thought;—not any remarkable book of wisdom; not any broad generalization, any equal power of imagination. No Novum Organon; no Mécanique Céleste; no Principia; no Paradise Lost; no Hamlet; no Wealth of Nations; no National Anthem; have we yet contributed.
Nature is a frugal mother and never gives without measure. When she has work to do she qualifies men for that and sends them equipped for that. In Massachusetts she did not want epic poems and dramas yet, but first, planters of towns, fellers of the forest, builders of mills and forges, builders of roads, and farmers to till and harvest corn for the world. Corn, yes, but honest corn; corn with thanks to the Giver of corn; and the best thanks, namely, obedience to his law; this was the office imposed on our Founders and people; liberty, clean and wise. It was to be built on Religion, the Emancipator; Religion which teaches equality of all men in view of the spirit which created man.
The seed of prosperity was planted. The people did not gather where they had not sown. They did not try to unlock the treasure of the world except by honest keys of labor and skill. They knew, as God knew, that command of nature comes by obedience to nature; that reward comes by faithful service; that the most noble motto was that of the Prince of Wales,—“I serve,”—and that he is greatest who serves best. There was no secret of labor which they disdained.
They accepted the divine ordination that man is for use; that intelligent being exists to the utmost use; and that his ruin is to live for pleasure and for show. And when within our memory some flippant senator wished to taunt the people of this country by calling them “the mudsills of society,” he paid them ignorantly a true praise; for good men are as the green plain of the earth is, as the rocks, and the beds of rivers are, the foundation and flooring and sills of the State.
The power of labor which belongs to the English race fell here into a climate which befriended it, and into a maritime country made for trade, where was no rival and no envious lawgiver. The sailor and the merchant made the law to suit themselves, so that there was never, I suppose, a more rapid expansion in population, wealth and all the elements of power, and in the citizens, consciousness of power and sustained assertion of it, than was exhibited here.
Moral values become also money values. When men saw that these people, besides their industry and thrift, had a heart and soul and would stand by each other at all hazards, they desired to come and live here. A house in Boston was worth as much again as a house just as good in a town of timorous people, because here the neighbors would defend each other against bad governors and against troops; quite naturally house-rents rose in Boston.
Besides, youth and health like a stirring town, above a torpid place where nothing is doing. In Boston they were sure to see something going forward before the year was out. For here was the moving principle itself, the primum mobile, a living mind agitating the mass and always afflicting the conservative class with some odious novelty or other; a new religious sect, a political point, a point of honor, a reform in education, a philanthropy.
From Roger Williams and Eliot and Robinson and the Quaker women who for a testimony walked naked into the streets, and as the record tells us “were arrested and publicly whipped,—the baggages that they were;” from Wheelwright the Antinomian and Ann Hutchinson and Whitefield and Mother Ann the first Shaker, down to Abner Kneeland and Father Lamson and William Garrison, there never was wanting some thorn of dissent and innovation and heresy to prick the sides of conservatism.
With all their love of his person, they took immense pleasure in turning out the governor and deputy and assistants, and contravening the counsel of the clergy; as they had come so far for the sweet satisfaction of resisting the Bishops and the King.