less advanced in material civilization than the country which they leave, the daily arrival of a thousand new citizens has come to be a commonplace event.  But in the seventeenth century the transfer of more than twenty thousand well-to-do people within twenty years from their comfortable homes in England to the American wilderness was by no means a commonplace event.  It reminds one of the migrations of ancient peoples, and in the quaint thought of our forefathers it was aptly likened to the exodus of Israel from the Egyptian house of bondage.

In this migration a principle of selection was at work which insured an extraordinary uniformity of character and of purpose among the settlers.  To this uniformity of purpose, combined with complete homogeneity of race, is due the preponderance early acquired by New England in the history of the American people.  In view of this, it is worth while to inquire what were the real aims of the settlers of New England.  What was the common purpose which brought these men together in their resolve to create for themselves new homes in the wilderness?

This is a point concerning which there has been a great deal of popular misapprehension, and there has been no end of nonsense talked about it.  It has been customary first to assume that the Puritan migration was undertaken in the interests of religious liberty, and then to upbraid the Puritans for forgetting all about religious liberty as soon as people came among them who disagreed with their opinions.  But this view of the case is not supported by history.  It is quite true that the Puritans were chargeable with gross intolerance; but it is not true that in this they were guilty of inconsistency.  The notion that they came to New England for the purpose of establishing religious liberty, in any sense in which we should understand such a phrase, is entirely incorrect.  It is neither more nor less than a bit of popular legend.  If we mean by the phrase “religious liberty” a state of things in which opposite or contradictory opinions on questions of religion shall exist side by side in the same community, and in which everybody shall decide for himself how far he will conform to the customary religious observances, nothing could have been further from their thoughts.  There is nothing they would have regarded with more genuine abhorrence.  If they could have been forewarned by a prophetic voice of the general freedom—­or, as they would have termed it, license—­of thought and behaviour which prevails in this country to-day, they would very likely have abandoned their enterprise in despair. [12] The philosophic student of history often has occasion to see how God is wiser than man.  In other words, he is often brought to realize how fortunate it is that the leaders in great historic events cannot foresee the remote results of the labours to which they have zealously consecrated their lives.  It is part of the irony of human destiny that the end we really accomplish by striving