LIFE or JAMES WADSWORTH. 149' 



New- York. Direct advantage was to be derived by the proprietors of large 

 tracts by the sale at a profit of what they held as a speculation ; but more im- 

 portant, although indirect, bcnelit was to be attained by the whole region, in a 

 manner that will be presently seen. 



The circumstances of this mission, and the high character of the parties for 

 whom he was to act, gave him introduction and brought him into contact witlt 

 persons whose position in Europciin society was best suited to enlarge the views, 

 improve the mind, and polish the manners of a young man of so apt a disposi- 

 tion. While, therefore, he was successful in accomplishing the objects of his. 

 mission, he derived no small amount of personal advantage and gratification 

 from his foreign tour. His manner and address must have been from his youth 

 prepossessing, but he would have differed from all his Connecticut brethren had 

 he been free from provincial peculiarities, which, whether the growth of the 

 Ouse, the Trent, the Severn, or the Housatonic — nay, even if generated within 

 the sound of Bow-bell, taint with vulgarity manners in other respects the most 

 gentlemanly. In the subsequent years- of Mr. Wadsworth's life, there was no 

 trace of such a defect ; and so far as language is concerned, he might have un- 

 dergone the most severe and surest of tests, that of being able to pass through 

 every region in which the English language is spoken, without exciting an in- 

 quiry as to the place of his birth. 



The results of Mr. Wadsworth's mission to Europe had effects on the pros- 

 perity of the region in which he had fixed his residence little appreciated at the 

 time, and now in a great degree forgotten. It is the fashion of the day 

 to advocate the infinitesimal division of the national domain, and to consider 

 purchases of large contiguous tracts as a public evil. The experience of the 

 State of New-York was in direct opposition to these narrow views. The large, 

 estates would have been destined to remain an unproductive wilderness in the 

 hands of their owners, had they not been opened to the view of persons seeking 

 for places of settlement. Hence roads were laid out and worked, bridges built, 

 aids given to the erection of schools and churches, and under the influence of 

 this forced growth, the region between Seneca Lake and the sources of waters 

 running to Lake Erie outstripped in its improvement the more accessible and 

 equally fertile Military Tract, which the gratitude of the State of New- York had 

 divided in small lots among its Revolutionary soldiers. The accunmlalion of 

 the surplus products of the former region created a necessity for the means of 

 transport, and its population, animated by the ardor of a youthful vigor and di- 

 rected by minds of no little power, formed the popular force which Clinton 

 wielded with such skill, when the construction of the Erie Canal was decreed, 

 in opposition to the vote of the City of New-York and of th* River Counties. 



It has been asserted, and the assertion is supported by evidence almost intrin- 

 sic, that for thirty years from the time the Pulteney family acquired the estate 

 known by their name, no remittance had been made to them in England, either as 

 mcorae, or as a return for the original investment and the large additional capital 

 expended in opening communications. The condition of the Wadsworth estate 

 was not different, with the exception that the funds destined by the foreign pro- 

 prietors to the support of agents, served to defray the unostentatious but liberal 

 hospitalities of the American landholders. When the lime at length arrived at 

 which the profits of the long struggle were to be reaped, the ditference between 

 the foreign and resident owner became apparent. The former had indeed fairly 

 earned them by the employment of his capital, and deserved them for the benefits a 



