nd Virginia were purely English? They were from the same stock
precisely. As to the _character_ of each, I cannot do better than to
quote from a work of which Americans may well be both glad and proud, a
work that has set us and our institutions in a truer and juster light
than any before it. I allude to the work of M. De Tocqueville on
'Democracy in America.' In volume first, chapter fifth, he says:

'The men sent to Virginia were seekers of gold, adventurers without
resources and without character, whose turbulent and restless
spirits endangered the infant colony, and rendered its progress
uncertain. The artisans and agriculturists arrived afterward; and
although they were a more moral and orderly race of men, they were
in no wise above the level of the inferior classes in England. No
lofty conceptions, no intellectual system, directed the foundation
of these new settlements.'

He adds, in a note:

'It was not till some time later, that a certain number of rich
English capitalists came to fix themselves in the colony.'

It is true that in the course of time some men of high character and
position were attracted to the genial climate and virgin resources of
the new Southern colonies, and, buying up large tracts of land, fixed
themselves permanently, sensibly modifying the condition of affairs. The
descendants of such men as these afterward became the most famous
leaders of the Revolution which Puritan principles effected. They were
men of whom descendants may well be proud, but it is certain that they
have had _very few_ descendants; _therefore_, the great body of the
slaveholders, each one of whom would fain believe himself, and try to
make others believe him, a scion of this renowned stock, must have had a
very different origin.

In striking contrast with the above account, here is what he says of the
first settlers of the Northern colonies:

'The settlers who established themselves on the shores of New
England all belonged to the more independent classes of their
native country. Their union on the soil of America at once
presented the singular phenomenon of a society containing neither
lords nor common people, neither rich nor poor. These men
possessed, in proportion to their number, a greater mass of
intelligence than is to be found in any European nation of our own
time. All, without a single exception, had received a g