In this way.  The Land of Romance was no longer the fable land where a dozen Protestant soldiers, headed by the invincible Dragon, could drive out a whole garrison of Catholic Spaniards and sack a town.  It had ceased to be another Ophir and a richer Golconda; but it was the Land of Religious Freedom.  The Church of England and Ireland, by law established, had no power across the ocean.  America, to the Nonconformist of the seventeenth century, was a haven and a refuge ever open in case of need.  The history of Nonconformity shows the vital necessity of such a refuge.  The very existence of free America gave to the English Nonconformist strength and courage.  Such a persecution as that of the Irish Presbyterians became impossible when it had been once demonstrated that, should the worst happen, the persecuted religionists would escape by voluntary exile.

That the spirit of persecution long survived is proved by the lingering among us down to our own days of the religious disabilities.  Within the memory of living men, no one outside the Church of England could be educated at a public school; could take a degree at Oxford or Cambridge; could hold a scholarship or a fellowship at any college; could become a professor at either university; could sit in the House of Commons; could be appointed to any municipal office; could hold a commission in the army or navy.  These restrictions practically—­though with some exceptions—­reduced Nonconformity in England to the lower middle class, the small traders.  Their ministers, who had formerly been scholars and theologians, fell into ignorance; their creeds became narrower; they had no social influence; but for the example of their brethren across the ocean they would have melted away and been lost like the Non-Jurors who expired fifty years ago in the last surviving member; or, like a hundred sects which have arisen, made a show of flourishing for a while, and then perished.  They were sustained, first, by the memory of a victorious past; next, by the tradition of religious liberty; and, thirdly, by the report of a country—­a flourishing country—­where there were no religious disabilities, no social inferiority on account of faith and creed.  Not reports only:  there was a continual passing to and fro between Bristol and Boston during three-fourths of the eighteenth century.  The colonies were visited by traders, soldiers and sailors.  John Dunton in the year 1710 thought nothing of a voyage to Boston with a consignment of books for sale.  Ned Ward, another bookseller, made the same journey with the same object.  There exists a whole library of Quaker biographies showing how these restless apostles travelled backwards and forwards, crossing and recrossing the Atlantic, and journeying up and down the country, to preach their gospel.  And the life of John Wesley also proves that the Colonies were regarded as easily accessible.  I have seen a correspondence between a family in London and their cousins in Philadelphia, in the reign of