[33] Remarks, p. 26.
[34] This I believe is meant for Dr. Adam Smith, who seems not at this time to have printed any of his political pieces. B. V.
[35] Remarks, p. 27.
[36] Remarks, p. 50, 51.
[37] Remarks, p. 50, 51.
[38] The reason of this greater increase in America than in Europe is, that in old settled countries, all trades, farms, offices, and employments are full; and many people refrain marrying till they see an opening, in which they can settle themselves, with a reasonable prospect of maintaining a family: but in America, it being easy to obtain land, which, with moderate labour will afford subsistence and something to spare, people marry more readily and earlier in life, whence arises a numerous offspring and the swift population of those countries. It is a common error, that we cannot fill our provinces or increase the number of them, without draining this nation of its people. The increment alone of our present colonies is sufficient for both those purposes. [Written in 1760.]
[39] Viz. forty sail, none of more than forty guns.
[40] Sir C. Whitworth has the following assertion: "Each state in Germany is jealous of its neighbours; and hence, rather than facilitate the export or transit of its neighbours' products or manufactures, they have all recourse to strangers." State of Trade, p. xxiv. B. V.
[41] From New York into lake Ontario, the land-carriage of the several portages altogether, amounts to but about twenty-seven miles. From lake Ontario into lake Erie, the land-carriage at Niagara is but about twelve miles. All the lakes above Niagara communicate by navigable straits, so that no land-carriage is necessary, to go out of one into another. From Presqu'isle on lake Erie, there are but fifteen miles land-carriage, and that a good waggon-road, to Beef River, a branch of the Ohio; which brings you into a navigation of many thousand miles inland, if you take together the Ohio, the Mississippi, and all the great rivers and branches that run into them.
[42] I beg pardon for attempting to remind the reader that he must not confound the river Duna, with the river Dwina.—The fork of the Ohio is about four hundred miles distant from the sea, and the fork of the Mississippi about nine hundred: it is four hundred miles from Petersburgh to Moscow, and very considerably more than four thousand from Petersburgh to Pekin. This is enough to justify Dr. Franklin's positions in the page above, without going into farther particulars. B. V.