c and social
history of the colonies, see Bruce's _Social Life in Virginia_ and _The
Economic History of Virginia in the 17th Century_, and Weeden's
_Economic History of New England_. Contemporary pamphlets relating to
the colonies are to be found in Force's _Tracts and Other Papers_, 4
vols. Washington, 1838. To understand the motives and ideals of the
Separatists and Puritans one must read their own accounts. Of these, the
most charming is Bradford's _History of Plymouth Plantation_. This, as
well as Governor Winthrop's _Journal_, is printed in Jameson's _Original
Narratives of Early American History_. Johnson's _Wonder Working
Providence_, in the same collection, is a history from the point of view
of a loyal Puritan of average education and intelligence. Morton's _New
English Canaan_ (1632) and _The Simple Cobler of Aggawam_ (1647) are
printed in Force's _Tracts and Other Papers_, vols. II, III. A hostile
account of the Puritan experiment is in Samuel Gorton's _Letter to
Nathaniel Morton_, in Force's _Tracts_, etc., vol. IV. About three
quarters of a century after the founding of Massachusetts, Cotton Mather
wrote his _Magnalia Christi Americana, or the Ecclesiastical History of
New England_, 2 vols. Hartford, 1855. In Bk. I he gives an account of
the founding from the point of view of one who felt that New England was
then departing from the "primitive principles."

CHAPTER IV

ENGLAND AND HER COLONIES IN THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES

_Your trade is the mother and nurse of your seamen; your seamen are
the life of your fleet; your fleet is the security of your trade,
and both together are the wealth, strength, and glory of Britain._

LORD HAVERSHAM.

I

The decay of the old Puritanism in Massachusetts, so distressing to
Cotton Mather, was but a faint reflection of the change which had come
over England since the return of Charles II to Whitehall. With the fall
of the Puritan regime moral earnestness and high emotional tension,
regarded as contrary to nature and reason, gave way to a rationalizing
habit of mind, to seriousness tempered with well-bred common sense or
spiced with a pinch of cynical indifference. Religion fell to be a
conventional conformity. Theologians, wanting vital faith in God, were
content to balance the probabilities of his existence. Amusement became
the avocation of a leisure class, and the average man was intent like
Samuel Pepys to put money in h