all the varieties of individual
behavior in the various colonies that began to dot the seaboard, certain
qualities demanded by the new surroundings are felt in colonial life
and in colonial writings. One of these is the instinct for order, or at
least that degree of order essential to the existence of a camp. It
was not in vain that John Smith sought to correct the early laxness at
Jamestown by the stern edict: "He that will not work, neither shall
he eat." Dutch and Quaker colonies taught the same inexorable maxim
of thrift. Soon there was work enough for all, at good wages, but the
lesson had been taught. It gave Franklin's "Poor Richard" mottoes their
flavor of homely, experienced truth.

Order in daily life led straight to political order, just as the
equality and resourcefulness of the frontier, stimulated by isolation
from Europe, led to political independence. The pioneer learned to make
things for himself instead of sending to London for them, and by and by
he grew as impatient of waiting for a political edict from London as
he would become in waiting for a London plough. "This year," wrote one
colonist, "ye will go to complain to the Parliament, and the next year
they will send to see how it is, and the third year the government is
changed." The time was coming when no more complaints would be sent.

One of the most startling instances of this colonial instinct for
self-government is the case of Thomas Hooker. Trained in Emmanuel
College of the old Cambridge, he arrived in the new Cambridge in 1633.
He grew restless under its theocratic government, being, it was said,
"a person who when he was doing his Master's work, would put a king into
his pocket." So he led the famous migration of 1636 from Massachusetts
to Hartford, and there helped to create a federation of independent
towns which made their own constitution without mentioning any king,
and became one of the corner-stones of American democracy. In May, 1638,
Hooker declared in a sermon before the General Court "that the choice of
public magistrates belongs unto the people by God's own allowance," and
"that they who have the power to appoint officers and magistrates, it is
in their power, also, to set the bounds and limitations of the power and
place into which they call them." The reason of this is: "Because the
foundation of authority is laid, firstly, in the free consent of the
people." This high discourse antedates the famous pamphlets on liberty
by