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AT SAMUEL GKliEN'S PKIiSS IN CAMBRIDf^E



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IS2 THE BEGINNINGS OF NEW ENGLAND

have goaded her into rebellion. The war of independence
might have been waged a century sooner than it was. It is
not easy to point to any especial advantage that could have
come to America from this ; one is rather inclined to think
of the peculiarly valuable political training of the eighteenth
century that would have been lost. Such surmises are for
the most part idle. But as concerns Europe, it is plain to be
seen, for reasons stated in my first chapter, that the decisive
victory of Charles I. would have been a calamity of the first
magnitude. It would have been like the Greeks losing
Marathon or the Saracens winning Tours, supposing the
worst consequences ever imagined in those hypothetical
cases to have been realized. Or taking a more contracted
view, we can see how England, robbed of her Puritan ele-
ment, might still have waxed' in strength, as France has
done in spite of losing the Huguenots ; but she . could not
have taken the proud position that she has come to occupy
as mother of nations. Her preeminence since Cromwell's
time has been chiefly due to her unrivalled power of planting
self-supporting colonies, and that power has had its roots in
English self-government. It is the vitality of the English
Idea that is making the language of Cromwell and Washing-
ton dominant in the world.
