Democracy in America

by Alexis de Tocqueville

One rightly esteems Jeremy Belknap’s work, entitled History of New Hampshire, 2 vols. in octavo, printed in Boston in 1792. See particularly in the work of Belknap, chapter 3 of the first volume. In that chapter the author gives extremely precious details about the political and religious principles of the Puritans, about the causes of their emigration, and about their laws. One finds in it this curious citation from a sermon pronounced in 1663: “It concerneth New England always to remember, that they are originally a plantation religious, not a plantation of trade. The profession of the purity of doctrine, worship and discipline is written upon her forehead. Let merchants, and such as are increasing cent per cent remember this, and that worldly gain was not the end and design of the people of New England but religion. And if any man among us make religion as twelve, and the world as thirteen, such an one hath not the spirit of a true New Englandman.”*5 Readers will encounter in Belknap more general ideas and more force of thought than other American historians have presented up to the present. I do not know if this book is found in the Bibliothèque Royale.