Part 29

might be supposed the last to captivate, nay, to absorb, such a mind as I have been describing. Yet so it was: even in the midst of all this cold humility, dominion was to be found. That rule, which of all others, is most gratifying to a mind conscious of its own power, and directing it to the purposes of benevolence, the voluntary subjection of mind, the homage which a sect pays to its leader, is justly accounted the most gratifying species of power; and to this lurking ambition, every thing is rendered subservient by those who have once known this native and inherent superiority. This man, who had wasted his inheritance, alienated his relations, and estranged his friends; who had forsaken the religion of his ancestors, and in a great measure, the customs of his country; whom some charged with folly, and others with madness, was, nevertheless, destined to plan with consummate wisdom, and execute with indefatigable activity and immovable firmness, a scheme of government, such as has been the wish, at least, of every enlarged and benevolent mind, (from Plato downwards,) which has indulged speculations of the kind. The glory of realizing, in some degree, all these fair visions, was, however, reserved for William Penn alone.

Imagination delights to dwell on the tranquil abodes of plenty, content, and equanimity, that so quickly rose like an exhalation in the domains of this pacific legislator. That he should expect to protect the quiet abodes of his peaceful and industrious followers, merely with a fence of olive, (as one may call his gentle institutions,) is wonderful; and the more so, when we consider him to have lived in the world, and known too well, by his own experience, of what discordant elements it is composed. A mind so powerful and comprehensive as his, could not but know, that the wealth which quiet and blameless industry insensibly accumulates, proves merely a lure to attract the armed spoiler to the defenceless dwellings of those, who do not think it a duty to protect themselves.

“But when divine ambition swell’d his mind, Ambition truly great, of virtuous deeds,”

he could no otherwise execute his plan of utility, than by the agency of a people who were bound together by a principle, at once adhesive and exclusive, and who were too calm and self-subdued, too benignant and just, to create enemies to themselves among their neighbours. There could be no motive but the thirst of rapine, for disturbing a community so inoffensive; and the founder, no doubt, flattered himself that the parent country would not fail to extend to them that protection, which their useful lives and helpless state both needed and deserved.

Never, surely, were institutions better calculated for nursing the infancy of a sylvan colony, from which the noisy pleasures, and more bustling varieties of life were necessarily excluded. The serene and dispassionate state, to which it seems was the chief aim of this sect to bring the human mind, is precisely what is requisite to reconcile it to the privations that must be encountered, during the early stages of the progression of society, which necessarily excluded from the pleasures of refinement, should be guarded from its pains.

Where nations, in the course of time, become civilized, the process is so gradual from one race to another, that no violent effort is required to break through settled habits, and acquire new tastes and inclinations, fitted to what might be almost styled a new mode of existence. But when colonies are first settled in a country so entirely primitive as that to which William Penn led his followers, there is a kind of retrograde movement of the mind, requisite to reconcile people to the new duties and new views that open to them, and to make the total privation of wonted objects, modes, and amusements, tolerable.

Perfect simplicity of taste and manners, and entire indifference to much of what the world calls pleasure, were necessary to make life tolerable to the first settlers in a trackless wilderness. These habits of thinking and living, so difficult to acquire, and so painful when forced upon the mind by inevitable necessity, the quakers brought with them, and left, without regret, a world from which they were already excluded by that austere simplicity which peculiarly fitted them for their new situation. A kindred simplicity, and a similar ignorance of artificial refinements and high seasoned pleasures, produced the same effect in qualifying the first settlers at Albany to support the privations, and endure the inconveniences of their novitiate in the forests of the new world. But to return to William Penn: the fair fabric he had erected, though it speedily fulfilled the utmost promise of hope, contained within itself the principle of dissolution, and from the very nature of the beings which composed it, must have decayed, though the revolutionary shock had not so soon shaken its foundations. Sobriety and prudence lead naturally to wealth, and wealth to authority, which soon strikes at the root of the short lived principle of equality. A single instance may occur here and there, but who can ever suppose nature running so contrary to her bias, that all the opulent members of a community should acquire or inherit wealth for the mere purpose of giving it away? Where there are no elegant arts to be encouraged, no elegant pleasures to be procured, where ingenuity is not to be rewarded, or talent admired or exercised; what is wealth but a cumbrous load, sinking the owner deeper and deeper into grossness and dulness, having no incitement to exercise the only faculties permitted him to use, and few objects to relieve in a community from which vice and poverty are equally excluded by their industry, and their wholesome rule of expulsion. We all know that there is not in society a more useless and disgusting character than what is formed by the possession of great wealth, without elegance or refinement; without, indeed, that liberality which can only result from a certain degree of cultivation. What then would a community be, entirely formed of such persons, or supposing such a community to exist, how long would they adhere to the simple manners of their founder, with such a source of corruption mingled with their very existence? Detachment from pleasure and from vanity, frugal and simple habits, and an habitual close adherence to some particular trade or employment, are circumstances that have a sure tendency to enrich the individuals who practise them. This, in the end, is “to give humility a coach and six,” that is, to destroy the very principle of adhesion which binds and continues the sect.

Highly estimable as a sect, these people were respectable and amiable in their collective capacity as a colony. But then it was an institution so constructed, that, without a miracle, its virtues must have expired with its minority. I do not here speak of the necessity of its being governed and protected by those of different opinions, but merely of wealth stagnating without its proper application. Of this humane community it is but just to say, that they were the only Europeans in the new world who always treated the Indians with probity like their own, and with kindness calculated to do honour to the faith they professed. I speak of them now in their collective capacity. They, too, are the only people that, in a temperate, judicious, (and, I trust, successful) manner, have endeavoured and still endeavour to convert the Indians to Christianity; for them, too, was reserved the honourable distinction of being the only body who sacrificed interest to humanity, by voluntarily giving freedom to those slaves whom they held in easy bondage. That a government so constituted could not, in the nature of things, long exist, is to be regretted; that it produced so much good to others, and so much comfort and prosperity to its subjects while it did exist, is an honourable testimony of the worth and wisdom of its benevolent founder.

CHAP. LXVI.

Prospects brightening in British America—Desirable country on the interior lakes, &c.

HOWEVER discouraging the prospect of society on this great continent may at present appear, there is every reason to hope that time, and the ordinary course of events, may bring about a desirable change; but in the present state of things, no government seems less calculated to promote the happiness of its subjects, or to ensure permanence to itself, than that feeble and unstable system which is only calculated for a community comprising more virtue and more union than such a heterogeneous mixture can be supposed to have attained. States, like individuals, purchase wisdom by suffering, and they have probably much to endure before they assume a fixed and determinate form.

Without partiality it may be safely averred, that notwithstanding the severity of the climate, and other unfavourable circumstances, the provinces of British America are the abode of more present safety and happiness, and contain situations more favourable to future establishments, than any within the limits of the United States.

To state all the grounds upon which this opinion is founded, might lead me into discussions, narratives, and description, which might swell into a volume, more interesting than the preceding one. But being at present neither able nor inclined to do justice to the subject, I shall only briefly observe first, with regard to the government, it is one to which the governed are fondly attached, and which like religion, becomes endeared to its votaries, by the sufferings they have endured for their adherence to it. It is consonant to their earliest prejudices, and sanctioned by hereditary attachment. The climate is, indeed, severe, but it is steady and regular; the skies in the interior are clear, the air is pure. The summer, with all the heat of warm climates to cherish the productions of the earth, is not subject to the drought that in such climates scorches and destroys them. Abundant woods afford shelter and fuel, to mitigate the severity of winter; and streams rapid and copious, flow in all directions to refresh the plants and cool the air, during their short but ardent summer.

The country, barren at the sea side, does not afford an inducement for those extensive settlements which have a tendency to become merely commercial from their situation. It becomes more fertile as it recedes further from the sea; thus holding out an inducement to pursue nature into her favourite retreats, where on the banks of mighty waters, calculated to promote all the purposes of social traffic among the inhabitants, the richest soil, the happiest climate, and the most complete detachment from the world, promise a safe asylum to those who carry the arts and the literature of Europe, hereafter to grace and enlighten scenes where agriculture has already made rapid advances.

In the dawning light which already begins to rise in these remote abodes, much may be discovered of what promises a brighter day. Excepting the remnant of the old Canadians, who are a very inoffensive people, patient and cheerful, attached to monarchy, and much assimilated to our modes of thinking and living, these provinces are peopled, for the most part, with inhabitants possessed of true British hearts and principles. Veterans who have shed their blood, and spent their best days in the service of the parent country, and royalists who have fled here for a refuge, after devoting their property to the support of their honour and loyalty; who adhere together, and form a society graced by that knowledge and those manners which rendered them respectable in their original state, with all the experience gained from adversity; and that elevation of sentiment which results from the consciousness of having suffered in a good cause. Here, too, are clusters of emigrants who have fled, unacquainted with the refinements, and uncontaminated by the old world, to seek for that bread and peace, which the progress of luxury and the change of manners denied them at home. Here they come in kindly confederation, resolved to cherish in those kindred groups, which have left with social sorrow their native mountains, the customs and traditions, the language and the love of their ancestors, and to find comfort in that religion which has ever been their support and their shield, for all that they have left behind.[27]

Footnote 27:

It is needless to enlarge on a subject, to which Lord Selkirk has done such ample justice, who wanted nothing but a little experience and a little aid, to make the best practical comments on his own judicious, observations.

It is by tribes of individuals intimately connected with each other by some common tie, that a country is most advantageously settled, to which the obvious superiority in point of principle and union that distinguishes British America from the United States, is chiefly owing. Our provinces afford no room for wild speculations, either of the commercial or political kind; regular, moderate trade, promising little beyond a comfortable subsistence, and agriculture, requiring much industry and settled habits, are the only paths open to adventurers; and the chief inducement to emigration is the possibility of an attached society of friends and kindred, finding room to dwell together, and meeting, in the depth of these fertile wilds, with similar associations. Hence, solitary and desperate adventurers, the vain, the turbulent, and the ambitious, shun these regulated abodes of quiet industry, for scenes more adapted to their genius.

I shall now conclude my recollections, which circumstances have often rendered very painful; but will not take upon me to enlarge on those hopes that stretch a dubious wing into temporal futurity, in search of a brighter day, and a better order of things. Content if I have preserved some records of a valuable life; thrown some glimmering light upon the progress of society in that peculiar state, which it was my fate to witness and to share, and afforded some hours of harmless amusement to those lovers of nature and of truth, who can patiently trace their progress through a tale devoid alike of regular arrangement, surprising variety, and artificial embellishment.

THE END.

● Transcriber’s Notes: ○ There were two CHAP. XXIX. The second was changed to CHAP. XXXI. ○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected. ○ Typographical errors were silently corrected. ○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a predominant form was found in this book. ○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).

End of Project Gutenberg's Memoirs of an American Lady, by Anonymous