w and possibly hostile country. They themselves had not yet
grasped the national idea, and could not see that the increase in power
of any one quarter of the land, or the addition to it of any new
unsettled territory, really raised by so much the greatness of every
American. However, there was one point on which the more far-seeing of
these critics were right. They urged that it would be better for the
country not to try to sell the public land speedily in large tracts, but
to grant it to actual settlers in such quantity as they could use.
[Footnote: St. Clair to Jay, Dec. 13, 1788.]

Failure of These Colonization Schemes.

The different propositions to settle large colonies in the Spanish
possessions came to naught, although quite a number of backwoodsmen
settled there individually or in small bands. One great obstacle to the
success of any such movement was the religious intolerance of the
Spaniards. Not only were they bigoted adherents of the Church of Rome,
but their ecclesiastical authorities were cautioned to exercise over all
laymen a supervision and control to which the few Catholics among the
American backwoodsmen would have objected quite as strenuously as the
Protestants. It is true that in trying to induce immigration they often
promised religious freedom, but when they came to execute this promise
they explained that it merely meant that the new-comers would not be
compelled to profess the Roman Catholic faith, but that they would not
be allowed the free exercise of their own religion, nor permitted to
build churches nor pay ministers. This was done with the express purpose
of weakening their faith, and rendering it easy to turn them from it,
and the Spaniards brought Irish priests into the country and placed them
among the American settlers with the avowed object of converting them.
[Footnote: Guyarre, III., 181, 200, 202.] Such toleration naturally
appealed very little to men who were accustomed to a liberty as complete
in matters ecclesiastical as in matters civil. When the Spanish
authorities, at Natchez, or elsewhere, published edicts interfering with
the free exercise of the Protestant religion, many of the settlers left,
[Footnote: Va. State Papers, IV., 30.] while in regions remote from the
Spanish centres of government the edicts were quietly disobeyed or
ignored.

Founding of New Madrid.

One of the many proposed colonies ultimately resulted in the founding of
a town which to this day