I cannot see that civilization gained anything, morally, by the discovery of America, until the new settlers were animated by other motives than a desire for sudden wealth.  When the country became colonized by men who sought liberty to worship God,—­men of lofty purposes, willing to undergo sufferings and danger in order to plant the seeds of a higher civilization,—­then there arose new forms of social and political life.  Such men were those who colonized New England.  And, say what you will, in spite of all the disagreeable sides of the Puritan character, it was the Puritans who gave a new impulse to civilization in the New World.  They founded schools and colleges and churches.  They introduced a new form of political life by their town-meetings, in which liberty was nurtured, and all local improvements were regulated.  It was the autonomy of towns on which the political structure of new England rested.  In them was born that true representative government which has gradually spread towards the West.  The colonies were embryo States,—­States afterwards to be bound together by a stronger tie than that of a league.  The New England States, after the war of independence, were the defenders and advocates of a federal and central power.  An entirely new political organization was gradually formed, resting equally on such pillars as independent townships and independent States, and these represented by delegates in a national centre.

So we believe America was discovered, not so much to furnish a field for indefinite material expansion, with European arts and fashions,—­which would simply assimilate America to the Old World, with all its dangers and vices and follies,—­but to introduce new forms of government, new social institutions, new customs and manners, new experiments in liberty, new religious organizations, new modes to ameliorate the necessary evils of life.  It was discovered that men might labor and enjoy the fruits of industry in a new mode, unfettered by the restraints which the institutions of Europe imposed.  America is a new field in which to try experiments in government and social life, which cannot be tried in the older nations without sweeping and dangerous revolutions; and new institutions have arisen which are our pride and boast, and which are the wonder and admiration of Europe.  America is the only country under the sun in which there is self-government,—­a government which purely represents the wishes of the people, where universal suffrage is not a mockery.  And if America has a destiny to fulfil for other nations, she must give them something more valuable than reaping machines, palace cars, and horse railroads.  She must give, not only machinery to abridge labor, but institutions and ideas to expand the mind and elevate the soul,—­ something by which the poor can rise and assert their rights.  Unless something is developed here which cannot be developed in other countries, in the way of new spiritual and