ABSTRACT
By 1630 there were almost seven thousand English settlers on the American coast and about four thousand in Bermuda and the West Indies. Soon after 1640 the total was to be increased by about sixty-five thousand, of whom about two thirds were on the islands and one third on the mainland. The American dream was beginning to take form in the hearts of men. To develop the higher life of a civilization requires both wealth and leisure — that is, accumulated resources which will permit men to have some time free from the grinding toil of merely feeding and sheltering themselves. The English government, because it was itself the freest at that time in the world, had helped along the American tendency by giving the colonies local governments in which the lower houses or assemblies were elected by the people.
