The character of its inhabitants, which had always been sedate and reflective, became argumentative and austere.

General information had been increased by intellectual debate, and the mind had received a deeper cultivation.

Whilst religion was the topic of discussion, the morals of the people were reformed.

All these national features are more or less discoverable in the physiognomy of those adventurers who came to seek a new home on the opposite shores of the Atlantic.
Another remark, to which we shall hereafter have occasion to recur, is applicable not only to the English, but to the French, the Spaniards, and all the Europeans who successively established themselves in the New World.

All these European colonies contained the elements, if not the development, of a complete democracy.