I Only Repeat What I Have Heard Many
Say, And No Wonder Their Hearts Should Glow, And Be Agitated With A
Multitude Of Feelings, Not Easy To Describe.
From nothing to start
into being; from a servant to the rank of a master; from being the
slave of some despotic prince, to become a free man, invested with
lands, to which every municipal blessing is annexed!
What a change
indeed! It is in consequence of that change that he becomes an
American. This great metamorphosis has a double effect, it
extinguishes all his European prejudices, he forgets that mechanism
of subordination, that servility of disposition which poverty had
taught him; and sometimes he is apt to forget too much, often
passing from one extreme to the other. If he is a good man, he forms
schemes of future prosperity, he proposes to educate his children
better than he has been educated himself; he thinks of future modes
of conduct, feels an ardour to labour he never felt before. Pride
steps in and leads him to everything that the laws do not forbid: he
respects them; with a heart-felt gratitude he looks toward the east,
toward that insular government from whose wisdom all his new
felicity is derived, and under whose wings and protection he now
lives. These reflections constitute him the good man and the good
subject. Ye poor Europeans, ye, who sweat, and work for the great -
ye, who are obliged to give so many sheaves to the church, so many
to your lords, so many to your government, and have hardly any left
for yourselves - ye, who are held in less estimation than favourite
hunters or useless lap-dogs - ye, who only breathe the air of nature,
because it cannot be withheld from you; it is here that ye can
conceive the possibility of those feelings I have been describing;
it is here the laws of naturalisation invite every one to partake of
our great labours and felicity, to till unrented, untaxed lands!
Many, corrupted beyond the power of amendment, have brought with
them all their vices, and disregarding the advantages held to them,
have gone on in their former career of iniquity, until they have
been overtaken and punished by our laws.
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