LETTER III
March 26, 1821.
As to the settlement in general, I consider it most prosperous, making, comparing it with many new ones, the most rapid strides to comfort and prosperity: our little town, now the capital of the English Settlement[60] has a store which supplies us with luxuries. A market with abundance of meat, poultry, and vegetables, so that persons with very limited incomes might live here in comfort. A person with 100 per Annum would be in affluence, which you will say is owing to the cheapness of provisions;[61] and freedom from tythes, taxes, poor's rates, &c. The labourer or mechanic who is steady, can work himself into plenty. {28} We are relieved entirely from the dreadful state of pauperism witnessed before I left England. My wife, with others of our acquaintance, have not had such good health for twenty years past. Mrs. Flower rides twenty miles a day, on horse back, with ease. I wish you could visit my old servant T. S. on one of the pleasantest situations in the world, with his nice garden, his cows, pigs, and poultry about him; his wife and children contented and happy. Perhaps were you to come suddenly upon him, eggs and bacon with a hastily got up chicken might be your fare; but if you gave him a day's notice, you would see a haunch of venison, or a fine cock turkey on the table. How long would Tom have fagged in England, although he had double his wages, before he could have possessed himself of two hundred acres of good land, and been placed in such affluence. Here, indeed, it may be truly said that the hand of the diligent maketh rich. We have here and there an idle person, but Providence has given them an industrious help-mate; and I know two instances of females earning from six to eight dollars a week by their needles; enough for them to keep comfortable tables.
I have felt great satisfaction in never having {29} invited any one to emigrate, and still greater in finding those who came here out of regard to my opinions, in such situations of ease and comfort, as not only to contribute to their own happiness, but to add greatly to mine. I may say that those who have asked and taken my advice have succeeded to their wishes; and in all cases which have come to my knowledge, where affairs have been conducted with industry and tolerable discretion, they have occasion to be thankful for the change they have made from the old world to the new. Our population increases. We want in particular more tailors and shoemakers: any one understanding the coarse earthen-ware manufactury would meet with great success.—I have just finished a flour mill on an inclined plane, which has given fresh spirit to agriculture. Distilleries are also building. It is a happy circumstance that while industry is attended with certain success, vice, drunkenness, and idleness are no better off than in Europe; the effect of this will be to give the virtuous that natural ascendancy over the vicious which they ought always to have. We read in the newspapers of all the bustle you have had about your queen;[62] but if it ends without the people regaining their long lost liberties, between the {30} collision of the different factions, you will only be worse off; and if the regaining of those liberties will not rouse the people to the same exertions for themselves as they have made for their queen, we must smile at their oppressions and say they deserve them.