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OF THE BEFOBMATION. 305Were they not, to the amount perhapsnumber, men banished across the ocean byof four-fifths of theirthe disturbancescaused by the Reformation in England ? It is true that theseplantations were founded during the reign of Elizabeth, butit is a notorious fact in history that the stormy period of theStuarts was also the period of their first prosperity.But with their religious freedom the colonists broughtalso the seeds of their political independence, which, onceplanted in the soil of America, must have sprung up, andsooner or later borne fruit and this, perhaps, even withoutsuch advantages as were thus afforded it. It is of the nature of colonies and in this consists their immense importance to mankind to set in motion a new mass of politicalideas. In a new countiy, beyond the sea, all cannot be asit was in the old. In the case of America, therefore, evenhad its connexion with the mother countiy been more closethan it was, the ultimate result would probably have beenthe same we know, however, that itsdependence uponEngland did not long continue firm we know;that each ofthe provinces had already formed its internal constitutionupon principles so purely republican, that when they threwoff their common allegiance, they possessed the inestimableadvantage of having no further revolution to undergo, andscarce any, except the central government, to form.Thus the political consequences of the Reformation spreadthemselves even beyond the ocean : and thus it is an undoubted truth, that without the Reformation there wouldhave been no free states of North America !Reader, lookbeyond the Atlantic, to that new world where Europe ispresented in its young and !vigorous offspring then lookback to Luther and Tetzel and then attempt, if thou darest,to foretell the effect of revolutions !reA SKETCH OFTHE CONSEQUENCES OF THE REFORMATION AS ITAFFECTED PHILOSOPHY.A LECTURE DELIVERED AT THE JUBILEE OF THE REFORMATION.[The following lecture was delivered in Latin by theauthor, when acting as Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy,