Sir, - Surely Fintan O'Toole has been in the United States long enough to have learned that the Puritans did not "found the colonies" (Opinion, December 19th). The first permanent English colony was founded by Anglican royalists at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1609. An earlier Virginia colony, founded in 1585, had failed. The Puritans did not reach America until 1620.
More to the point, no one founded "the colonies". Each colony was independent of the others, under royal charter. This colonial independence was the source of the sovereignty of the individual States, as expressed in the US Constitution. - Yours, etc.,
From M. E. Synon
North Great George's Street, Dublin 1.