LETTER TO 



As to what change will take place, it would, perhaps, be hard to 

 say : but, that some great change will come is certain ; and, it 

 is also certain, that the change must be for the better. Indeed, one 

 of the motives for the emigration of many is said to be, that they 

 think a convulsion inevitable. Why should such persons as I am 

 speaking of fear a convulsion ? Why should they suppose, that 

 they will suffer by a convulsion ? What have they done to pro 

 voke the rage of the blanketteers ? Do they think that their 

 countrymen, all but themselves, will be transformed into prowling 

 wolves ? This is precisely what the Boroughmongers wish them 

 to believe ; and, believing it, they flee instead of remaining to 

 assist to keep the people down, as the Boroughmongers wish them 

 to do. 



979. Being here, however, they, as you say, think only of the 

 good they have left behind them, and of the bad they find here. 

 This is no fault of theirs : it is the natural course of the human 

 mind ; and this you ought to have known. You yourself ack 

 nowledge, that England &quot; was never so dear to you as it is now in 

 &quot; recollection ; being no longer under its base oligarchy, I can 

 &quot; think of my native country and her noble institutions, apart from 

 * her politics &quot; I may ask you, by the way, what noble institutions 

 she has, which are not of a political nature ? Say the oppressions 

 of her tyrants, say that you can think of her and love her renown 

 and her famous political institutions, apart from those oppressions 

 and then I go with you with all my heart ; but, so thinking, and 

 so feeling, I cannot say with you, in your NOTES, that England is 

 to me &quot; matter of history,&quot; nor with you, in your LETTERS FROM 

 THE ILLINOIS, that &quot; where liberty is, there is my country.&quot; 



980. But, leaving this matter, for the present, if English Farmers 

 must emigrate, why should they encounter unnecessary difficulties? 

 Coming from a country like a garden, why should they not stop 

 in another somewhat resembling that which they have lived in 

 before ? Why should they, at an expence amounting to a large 

 part of what they possess, prowl two thousand miles at the hazard 

 of their limbs and lives, take women and children through scenes 

 of hardship and distress not easily described, and that too, to live 

 like gipsies at the end of their journey, for, at least, a year or two, 

 and, as I think I shall show, without the smallest chance of their 

 finally doing so well as they may do in these Atlantic States ? 

 Why should an English Farmer and his family, who have always 

 been jogging about a snug home-stead, eating regular meals, and 

 sleeping in warm rooms, push back to the Illinois, and encounter 

 those hardships, which require all the habitual disregard of com 

 fort of an American back-woods-man to overcome ? Why 

 should they do this ? The undertaking is hardly reconcileable 

 to reason in an Atlantic American Farmer who has half a dozen 

 sons, all brought up to use the axe, the saw, the chisel and the 

 hammer from their infancy, and every one of whom is ploughman, 

 carpenter, wheelwright and butcher, and can work from sun-rise 



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