4804.] Information refpecting Emigration to North America. 
turift in the country, is enriching himfelf 
without it in the increafe of his pofleffions, 
the man of trade on the frontiers is laying 
An frefh ftores with it and enlarging the 
commerce of his country. 
Such is the fiate of the American agri- 
culturift, which is the more enviable, be- 
caufe his property is his own, and no ava- 
ricious landlord can grind him in it, or 
turn him outof it. He is attached to his 
farm, becaufe his own induftry has con- 
verted it froma gloomy foreft to a fmiling 
pafture and fertile tillage; he fees his 
family increafe with pleafure, becaufe 
his flocks increafe with them, .and will 
fecure them from indigence. Such a 
ftate is happinefs enough for any one, but 
an iniatiate monopolift, and he, as I have 
faid before, isdebarred. Would to Hea- 
ven it was fo every where ! 
We next come to the Farmer, who has 
no proverty. Toa man of that defcrip- 
tion, all the foregoing obfervations and 
reafons for not purchafing before he ar- 
rives on the fpot, will apply equally: 
Firft, becaufe he is fure to pay more than 
twenty times the market price in the 
United S:ates, and next, becaufe, if on his 
arrival there he repents of his bargain, he 
is tied to it like a bear to a ftake. Tho- 
mas Paine writes thus in his letter to the 
Abbé Raynal—‘¢ I will remark, tha: I 
have not yet feen adefcription given in 
Europe, of America, of which the fidelity 
can be relied on.” I will fay the fame 
thing. It was fo even after he himfelf 
had written; and until very lately, one 
who is a Frenchman, a philofopher, and 
if not a better, an honefter writer than 
Paine, has given avery different account 
from his predeceffors, derived from actual 
obfervation on the fpot, and which is the 
mott candid and true one- yet publifhed. 
{ allude to Monfieur Volney’s View of 
America. He thus exhibits the folly of 
purchafing American lands in Europe, by 
a picture of Gallipolis or the French 
colony on the Ohio.—** A certain com- 
pany called the Scioto, cannot yet be for- 
gotten at Paris, that in 1790, opened with 
great parade, a fale of lands in the fineft 
dittri&t of the United ftates, at five fhillings 
an acre. Its propofals, diftrrbuted with 
profufion, promifed every thing that peo- 
ple are accultomed to promiie in iuch 
cafes: a climate healthy and delightful ; 
fearcely fuch a thing as froft in winter ; 
a river called, by way of eminence, the 
Beautiful River, abounding in excellent fih 
of enormous fize; magnificent forefts of a 
tree from which fugar flows, (the fogar 
maple) anda fhrub that yields eandles 
299 
(myrica cerifera) ; venifon in abundance $ 
without wolves, foxes, lions or tygers ; 
a fingle boar and fow in the courfe of three 
years will produce 300 pigs, without the 
Jeaft care being taken of them; in a coun. 
try like this, there are no taxes to pay, tho 
military enrollments ; no quarters to find 
for foldiers*, &c.—lIt is true,’ continues 
Monfieur Volney, ‘‘ the offerers of fo many 
benefits, did not fay, that thefe fine forefts 
were'a preliminary obftacle to every fort 
of cultivation ; that the trees muft be cut 
dewn one by one, and burned, and the 
land cleared with confiderable labour and 
coft ; that for atwelvemonth at leaf, every 
kind of provifion muft be procured from a 
difiance ; that hunting and fifhing, which 
are amufements after a good breakfaft, 
are very fevere toils ina favage and defert 
couniry. And above all they did not fay, 
that thefe excellent lands, were in the 
eig\bourhood of a fpecies of ferocious 
animels, worfe than wolves or tygers, the 
men called favages. In fhort, according 
to the {tate of the market in America thefe 
Jands were not really. worth more than 
three-pence or three pence half-penny an 
acre, and no purchafer in the country 
would have offered more.’’ And yet after 
all, ** the Scioto Company became bank. 
rupt, not making good its payments to the 
Onbio Company, the original proprietor 
and vender, which did not confider itfelf 
as bound by the aéts of its debtor, and 
refufed to the French the land for which 
they had already paid. Hence a heavy 
jJaw-fuit followed, which was fo much 
the more vexatious to the fettlers as their 
money was already exhaufted.”’ If thefe 
facts. will not open the eyes of emigrants, 
and fhew them the folly of purchafing 
American lands in Europe, I can only 
fay—S* Qui vult decipi, decipiatur.”” 
Monfier Volney tells us that in 17955 
this fettlement was fcarcely known in 
Philadelphia, and that, to reach it, he 
traverfed more than 200 miles of a moun- 
tainous and nearly defcrt country,+ and 
then, having proceeded in a boat fixty 
* ¢¢ If the authors of fuch romances,’? 
fays Monfieur Volney, ‘* could hear the pane= 
gyrics beftowed on, themfelves on the fpot, 
they would furely be difgufted with thofe 
trite rhetorical talents, that in the prefent 
inftance, have defiroyed the comfort of soo 
families.”? 
+ Thefe, to my knowledge, are part of the 
lands now expofing for fale in Europe ; and 
were they good for any thing, what I have 
faid of their inacceffibility to the emigrant, 
carrying back his family, fteck, implements, 
&<¢, is fufficiently accounted for and proved, 
Rrz miles 
