Who Then Can
Blame The Inhabitants Of These Countries For Transporting Themselves
Hither?
This great continent must in time absorb the poorest part of
Europe; and this will happen in proportion as
It becomes better
known; and as war, taxation, oppression, and misery increase there.
The Hebrides appear to be fit only for the residence of malefactors,
and it would be much better to send felons there than either to
Virginia or Maryland. What a strange compliment has our mother
country paid to two of the finest provinces in America! England has
entertained in that respect very mistaken ideas; what was intended
as a punishment, is become the good fortune of several; many of
those who have been transported as felons, are now rich, and
strangers to the stings of those wants that urged them to violations
of the law: they are become industrious, exemplary, and useful
citizens. The English government should purchase the most northern
and barren of those islands; it should send over to us the honest,
primitive Hebrideans, settle them here on good lands, as a reward
for their virtue and ancient poverty; and replace them with a colony
of her wicked sons. The severity of the climate, the inclemency of
the seasons, the sterility of the soil, the tempestuousness of the
sea, would afflict and punish enough. Could there be found a spot
better adapted to retaliate the injury it had received by their
crimes? Some of those islands might be considered as the hell of
Great Britain, where all evil spirits should be sent. Two essential
ends would be answered by this simple operation. The good people, by
emigration, would be rendered happier; the bad ones would be placed
where they ought to be. In a few years the dread of being sent to
that wintry region would have a much stronger effect than that of
transportation. - This is no place of punishment; were I a poor
hopeless, breadless Englishman, and not restrained by the power of
shame, I should be very thankful for the passage. It is of very
little importance how, and in what manner an indigent man arrives;
for if he is but sober, honest, and industrious, he has nothing more
to ask of heaven. Let him go to work, he will have opportunities
enough to earn a comfortable support, and even the means of
procuring some land; which ought to be the utmost wish of every
person who has health and hands to work. I knew a man who came to
this country, in the literal sense of the expression, stark naked; I
think he was a Frenchman, and a sailor on board an English man-of-
war. Being discontented, he had stripped himself and swam ashore;
where, finding clothes and friends, he settled afterwards at
Maraneck, in the county of Chester, in the province of New York: he
married and left a good farm to each of his sons. I knew another
person who was but twelve years old when he was taken on the
frontiers of Canada, by the Indians; at his arrival at Albany he was
purchased by a gentleman, who generously bound him apprentice to a
tailor.
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