• [ 146 ] [F«B. 



LEAVES TORN OUT OF A COMMON-PI.ACE BOOK. 



Colonies. — Colonies have been compared to young birds, whrch, while 

 they have need of a parent's help, acknowledge a parent's supremacy ; 

 and take Aving as soon as they have the means of providing for them- 

 selves. This separation, which would necessarily follow under any 

 circumstances, is usually hastened by the conduct of the mother coun- 

 try : for the interest of the colony is almost always sacrificed either to 

 her own or to that of one of her earlier offsetts. Tlius England ex- 

 cluded the West-India Islands from buying timber and provisions in 

 America, that they might be compelled to purchase these in her own 

 dearer and more distant markets ; thus Botany Bay was checked in 

 the establishment of a whale-fishery, lest it should interfere with that 

 of Hudson's Bay, &c. But if the analogy to which I have alluded in 

 the beginning of this leaf stands good in the first separation, it does 

 not in the after relations of the parties ; and the difference is as striking 

 in the end as the resemblance is in the beginning : for though a 

 pohtical disunion takes place between the parent state and her children, 

 kindly relations will generally revive and continue between them as 

 between members of the same family among men, arising out of com- 

 munity of race and community of habits. This we see strongly exem- 

 plified in the conduct of England and 



America, which preserves her predilection for England, as England 

 does in the main towards America, notwithstanding all the circumstances 

 that have occurred to alienate them ; for dating from our first separation, 

 the odisse quern heseris, that grand origin of enmity will, I fear, apply to 

 both. But in one respect, the ground for hatred is strongest on the 

 part of America, because she has been treated not with anger only, but 

 with contempt. Yet her principal commerce is driven into our ports, 

 and the English stranger receives a warmer welcome in the United 

 States than the inhabitants of any other country in the world. This 

 stranger, usually uninformed, and the slave of prejudices, often sees 

 every thing in a perverse point of view, and repays this hospitality with 

 censure, or with ridicule, ignorant that everj' country has its modes of 

 robbery ; and that men steal land m America as they steal the more 

 convenient assets of purses and pocket-handkerchiefs in England ; he 

 goes into the remotest settlements, which are the scenes of such rob- 

 bery, and forms his notions of Americans from what he has seen of 

 squatters and bacfc-ivoodsnien ; with no more justice than an American 

 would form his notions of Englishmen from the inhabitants of Dyot- 

 street or St. Giles's. It is no matter — the next Englishman who goes 

 among the Americans is as kindly received. It is the same with their 

 public and private conduct towards us. They quarrel, often unreason- 

 ably, with our political regulations, but continue to trade with us. 

 They complain, more justly, of the conduct of individuals, yet continue 

 to entertain them. In the same way the principal traffic of England 

 is with America, and (excluding the highest circles of English society) 

 no foreigner is so kindly received in England as an American. Nay, 

 even in the very highest, we have seen instances of success in some 

 Americans, such as no Italian, French, German, or Spaniard, unin- 

 vested with diplomatic honours, has, in our recollection, ever achieved. 

 This continuance of friendly relations, which seems incidental to two 

 countries so situated with respect to each other, has, however, led 



