In other words, a middle class was emerging and was beginning to amass money. At the same time the military and civil expenses of the kings, whose responsibilities were growing with their states, made taxes high and land dear. The limitless virgin lands of the New World offered a tempting relief for the hard-pressed.

In the second place, large parts of northern Europe had broken away from the ecclesiastical authority of the Roman Church in the sixteenth century, in the movement known as the Protestant Reformation. State churches were established in England, Germany, Scandinavia, and the Netherlands, with the rulers in authority instead of the Pope; and dissent from the doctrine of these established churches was treated, not only as religious heresy, but also as political treason. But, the spirit of free inquiry and religious innovation which had destroyed the unity of the Roman Church could not be held in check by rulers. Men claimed individual freedom of belief and worship. A great variety of religious sects appeared. Kings and princes tried to reduce them to submission, and the persecutions in Europe sent many refugees as colonists to the New World.

From the seventeenth to the twentieth century the tide of immigration flowed from Europe to America until, by the early 1900’s, less than half the population of the United States was native-born with native-born parents. Yet, these immigrants did not transport the political and social institutions of their own lands to the United States, but, instead, with remarkable rapidity, adopted the speech, customs, and ideals of America. For although Spain and France held or claimed by far the largest part of North America, while the English settlements were still confined to a narrow strip along the Atlantic coast, nevertheless those English settlements absorbed all the rest in their spread to the Pacific and made the English civilization -- English speech, English political ideals, English common law, English courts and local governments, English codes of manners and standards of culture--the basis of American life. We severed our political connection with England by the Revolution, but we could not lay aside the culture or destroy the institutions in which our forefathers had been trained for centuries. We still remained the daughter country, though we left the mother's roof and set up our own establishment.

Queen Elizabeth's long and glorious reign came to an end in 1603, when she was succeeded on the throne of England by James Stuart of Scotland. In the year 1606, King James gave permission to "certain loving subjects to deduce and conduct two colonies or plantations of settlers to America. The Stuart king began his reign with a pompous announcement of peace with all his European neighbors; consequently, though England claimed all North America by virtue of Cabot's discovery of 1497, James limited the territory of his grant so as not to encroach on the Spanish settlements of Florida or on the French interests about the St. Lawrence River.