nds among
favorite patroons; they built up a successful trade in furs with the
Indians--and sent the profits home. Real settlements they did not
found--at least, not settlements that were infused with the spirit of
local enterprise, or animated by vital ambitions looking to growth in
population and industry. After forty years of prosperity in trade they
had failed to become a settled and well-ordered colonial state,
looking bravely forward to permanence, expansion and eventual
statehood. The first free school in America is credited to their
initiative, and they were tolerant of other religions than their own,
but they planted no other seeds from which a great State could grow.

As Coligny before him had sought to plant in Florida a colony of
French Huguenots, so Raleigh, who had served under that great captain
in the religious wars of the Continent, sought to found in Virginia a
Protestant state. Much private wealth and many of his best years were
given by Raleigh to the furtherance of a noble ambition, but all to
futile immediate results. Raleigh's work, however, like all good work
nobly done, was not lost. Out of his failure at Roanoke came English
successes in later years--John Smith at Jamestown, the Pilgrims at
Plymouth.

Oldest of permanent English settlements in America is Jamestown, but
the English failures at Cuttyhunk and Kennebec antedate it by a few
years, and the failure at Roanoke by a quarter of a century. At
Jamestown, ten years after the arrival of the first settlers, a
legislative assembly was organized--a minature parliament, modeled
after the English House of Commons, and the first legislative body the
new world ever knew. Here, too, in Jamestown began negro slavery in
the United States, and in the same, or the next, year. Thus
legislative freedom and human slavery had their beginning in America
at the same time and in the same place.

Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay, next among the English settlements,
followed in due time the failure of Gosnold at Cuttyhunk and the
description of New England John Smith wrote and printed in 1614 after
a voyage of exploration along her coast. After several years Plymouth
contained only about 300 souls, but the Bay colony, founded ten years
later, increased rapidly. By 1634 nearly 4,000 of Winthrop's followers
had arrived, many of them college graduates. From this great parent
colony went forth Roger Williams to Rhode Island, Hooker to Hartford,
Davenport to New Ha