In these gigantic
processes of evolution we cannot mark beginnings or endings by years,
hardly even by centuries. But among the significant events which
prophesied the final triumph of the English over the Roman idea, perhaps
the most significant--the one which marks most incisively the dawning
of a new era--was the migration of English Puritans across the Atlantic
Ocean, to repeat in a new environment and on a far grander scale the
work which their forefathers had wrought in Britain. The voyage of the
Mayflower was not in itself the greatest event in this migration; but
it serves to mark the era, and it is only when we study it in the mood
awakened by the general considerations here set forth that we can
properly estimate the historic importance of the great Puritan Exodus.
[Sidenote: Significance of the Puritan Exodus]
CHAPTER II.
THE PURITAN EXODUS.
In the preceding chapter I endeavoured to set forth and illustrate some
of the chief causes which have shifted the world's political centre of
gravity from the Mediterranean and the Rhine to the Atlantic and the
Mississippi; from the men who spoke Latin to the men who speak English.
In the course of the exposition we began to catch glimpses of the
wonderful significance of the fact that--among the people who had
first suggested the true solution of the difficult problem of making a
powerful nation without sacrificing local self-government--when the
supreme day of trial came, the dominant religious sentiment was arrayed
on the side of political freedom and against political despotism.
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