The laws and customs, both political and
municipal, as well as the religious worship of the parent city, were
transferred to the colony; and the parent city herself, with all such of
her colonies as were not too far remote for frequent intercourse and
common sentiments, would appear like a family of cities, more or less
dependent, and more or less connected. We know how imperfect this system
was, as a system of general politics, and what scope it gave to those
mutual dissensions and conflicts which proved so fatal to Greece.
But it is more pertinent to our present purpose to observe, that nothing
existed in the character of Grecian emigrations, or in the spirit and
intelligence of the emigrants, likely to give a new and important
direction to human affairs, or a new impulse to the human mind. Their
motives were not high enough, their views were not sufficiently large
and prospective. They went not forth, like our ancestors, to erect
systems of more perfect civil liberty, or to enjoy a higher degree of
religious freedom. Above all, there was nothing in the religion and
learning of the age, that could either inspire high purposes, or give
the ability to execute them. Whatever restraints on civil liberty, or
whatever abuses in religious worship, existed at the time of our
fathers' emigration, yet even then all was light in the moral and mental
world, in comparison with its condition in most periods of the ancient
states. The settlement of a new continent, in an age of progressive
knowledge and improvement, could not but do more than merely enlarge the
natural boundaries of the habitable world.
Pages:
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187