CHAPTER XXV

INDEPENDENCE  FROM HOLLAND

Though we Americans speak the English lan¬
guage, our country is not a New England, or a
New Britain, but a New Europe. Our race gained
a thousand years of potency by crossing the Atlan¬
tic. Old World ideas, unless modified, will not
work on our continent. Yet, " above all nations is
humanity."

Dutchmen in America, like men of other strains
and stocks, face to face with new problems, found
themselves compelled to cut apron strings, and
firmly but reverently, first ask and then demand
of Patria to grant her sons freedom to grapple
with new tasks in their own way. That was the
meaning of the troubles and differences which
came into the eighteenth-century Dutch Church.
This typical Netherlands institution and survival
in America is conservative, above all others, of
things distinctively Dutch.

In 1739 seventy-five years had passed since the
English conquest, and two generations had grown
up. Only a few octogenarians among the Dutch
Churchmen had seen Patria. Most of the people
spoke the Dutch language, but were loyal to the
British King, yet from a sense of duty rather than