THE MORAL.

History affords us many instances of the ruin of states, by the prosecution of measures ill suited to the temper and genius of their people. The ordaining of laws in favor of one part of the nation, to the prejudice and oppression of another, is certainly the most erroneous and mistaken policy. An equal dispensation of protection, rights, privileges, and advantages, is what every part is entitled to, and ought to enjoy; it being a matter of no moment to the state, whether a subject grows rich and flourishing on the Thames or the Ohio, in Edinburgh or Dublin. These measures never fail to create great and violent jealousies and animosities between the people favored and the people oppressed; whence a total separation of affections, interests, political obligations, and all manner of connexions, necessarily ensue, by which the whole state is weakened, and perhaps ruined for ever!*

This mode of producing a strong impression, by emblematical devices and drawings, was a favorite one with Dr. Franklin, and he practised it on several occasions. Two other instances have already been mentioned in this work. See Vol. III. pp. 3, 25. — Editor.

VOL. IV.

58

MM

ON

A PROPOSED ACT OF PARLIAMENT

FOR PREVENTING EMIGRATION.

Written and first published in England. The date is uncertain. - EDITOR.

TO THE PRINTER OF THE PUBLIC ADVERTISER.

SIR,

You give us in your paper of Tuesday, the 16th of November, what is called "The Plan of an Act to be proposed at the next Meeting of Parliament to prevent the Emigration of our People." I know not from what authority it comes; but, as it is very circumstantial, I suppose some such plan may be really under consideration, and that this is thrown out to feel the pulse of the public. I shall therefore, with your leave, give my sentiments of it in your paper.

During a century and a half that Englishmen have been at liberty to remove if they pleased to America, we have heard of no law to restrain that liberty, and confine them as prisoners in this Island. Nor do we perceive any ill effects produced by their emigration. Our estates, far from diminishing in value through a want of tenants, have been in that period more than doubled; the lands in general are better cultivated; their increased produce finds a ready sale at an advanced price, and the complaint has for some time been, not that we want mouths to consume our meat, but that we want meat for our number of mouths.

Why then is such a restraining law now thought necessary? A paragraph in the same paper from the Edinburgh Courant, may perhaps throw some light upon this question. We are there told, "that one thousand five hundred people have emigrated to America from the shire of Sutherland within these two years, and carried with them seven thousand five hundred pounds sterling, which exceeds a year's rent of the whole county; that the single consideration of the misery which most of these people must suffer in America, independent of the loss of men and money to the mother country, should engage the attention, not only of the landed interest, but of administration." The humane writer of this paragraph may, I fancy, console himself with the reflection, that perhaps the apprehended future sufferings of those emigrants will never exist; for that it was probably the authentic accounts they had received from friends already settled there, of the felicity to be enjoyed in that country, with a thorough knowledge of their own misery at home, which induced their removal. And, as a politician, he may be comforted by assuring himself, that, if they really meet with greater misery in America, their future letters lamenting it, will be more credited than the Edinburgh Courant, and effectually, without a law, put a stop to the emigration. It seems some of the Scottish chiefs, who delight no longer to live upon their estates in the honorable independence they were born to, among their respecting tenants, but choose rather a life of luxury, though among the dependents of a court, have lately raised their rents most grievously, to support the expense. The consuming of those rents in London, though equally prejudicial to the poor county of Sutherland, no Edinburgh newspaper complains of; but now, that the oppressed ten