ould have died
heroically in torments rather than tolerate any religious liberty, we
should be talking something like sense about them, and telling the real
truth that is their due. The whole Puritan movement, from the Solemn
League and Covenant to the last stand of the last Stuarts, was a
struggle _against_ religious toleration, or what they would have called
religious indifference. The first religious equality on earth was
established by a Catholic cavalier in Maryland. Now there is nothing in
this to diminish any dignity that belongs to any real virtues and
virilities in the Pilgrim Fathers; on the contrary, it is rather to the
credit of their consistency and conviction. But there is no doubt that
the note of their whole experiment in New England was intolerance, and
even inquisition. And there is no doubt that New England was then only
the newest and not the oldest of these colonial experiments. At least
two Cavaliers had been in the field before any Puritans. And they had
carried with them much more of the atmosphere and nature of the normal
Englishman than any Puritan could possibly carry. They had established
it especially in Virginia, which had been founded by a great Elizabethan
and named after the great Elizabeth. Before there was any New England in
the North, there was something very like Old England in the South.
Relatively speaking, there is still.

Whenever the anniversary of the _Mayflower_ comes round, there is a
chorus of Anglo-American congratulation and comradeship, as if this at
least were a matter on which all can agree. But I knew enough about
America, even before I went there, to know that there are a good many
people there at any rate who do not agree with it. Long ago I wrote a
protest in which I asked why Englishmen had forgotten the great state of
Virginia, the first in foundation and long the first in leadership; and
why a few crabbed Nonconformists should have the right to erase a record
that begins with Raleigh and ends with Lee, and incidentally includes
Washington. The great state of Virginia was the backbone of America
until it was broken in the Civil War. From Virginia came the first great
Presidents and most of the Fathers of the Republic. Its adherence to
the Southern side in the war made it a great war, and for a long time a
doubtful war. And in the leader of the Southern armies it produced what
is perhaps the one modern figure that may come to shine like St. Louis
in the lost battle