Matthew Arnold, Civilization in the United States: First and Last Impressions of America.

[82] comes the praise of their religion, their own specially invented and indomitably maintained form of religion. “Let a man consider,” exclaims Mr. Bright again, “how much of what there is free and good and great, and constantly growing in what is good, in this country, is owing to Nonconformist action. Look at the churches and chapels it has reared over the whole country; look at the schools it has built; look at the ministers it has supported; look at the Christian work which it has conducted. It would be well for the Nonconformists, especially for the young among them, that they should look back to the history of their fathers, and that they should learn from them how much is due to truth and how much they have sacrificed to conscience.”

It is the groups of industrious, religious, and unshakable Nonconformists in all the towns, small and great, of England, whose praise is here celebrated by Mr. Bright. But he has an even more splendid tribute of praise for their brethren of the very same stock, and sort, and virtue, in America also. The great scale of things in America powerfully impresses Mr. Bright's imagination always; he loves to count the prodigious number of acres of land there, the prodigious number of bushels of wheat