![handle is hein.journals/pclscceqry6 and id is 1 raw text is:
Volume VI.] March, i891. [Number i.
POLITICAL SCIENCE
QUARTERLY.
THE POLITICAL IDEAS OF THE PURITANS.' I.
THE founders of the Puritan commonwealths of New Eng-
land were the only class among the early settlers of
America who were politically self-conscious. The type of soci-
ety which sprang up in the middle and southern colonies was
almost wholly the product of physical environment and of tra-
dition. The Puritans, to be sure, brought with them the com-
mon law and the institutions of local government to which they
had been accustomed at home. They were subject to the influ-
ences of frontier life and of comparative isolation upon a remote
continent. But in addition to that they were the advocates of
a definite religious system, which they came to the new world
to put into practice. That this was their purpose they never
lost an opportunity to declare. So important did this system
seem to them that they made all interests, social and political,
contribute to its maintenance and advancement. About it cen-
tred thought and effort; from it proceeded theory and policy.
Relations with the home government, intercourse with the
neighboring colonies, conduct towards immigrants, the bestow-
merit and withdrawal of citizenship, the political and social life
of town and commonwealth in all its phases, were ultimately
determined by their bearing on the supreme question - the
1 The writer of these articles is pleased to know that conclusions upon this subject
substantially identical with his own have been independently reached by Mr. Ch.
Borgeaud of the .tcole Libre es Sciences Politiques, Paris. The first of his mono-
graphs, treating of the political ideas of the English Puritans, was published last
year in the Annales of that School. Another, upon the New England Puritans, is
expected.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/pclscceqry6&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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