stratum is of a loose sandy nature, and so light, that, after the frosts are over, the pavement in the streets will not bear even the weight of a man; and the fields are so like a quagmire, that a man on horseback would be endangered in attempting to pass over them. From such lightness, the soil is apt, when rain comes, to form into small channels, that afterwards constitute what are termed gullies'; Vol. ii. p. 481.

These gullies are large holes and trenches, excavated by tremendous storms of rain in the summer, which wash away the seeds and roots of the corn, the manure, and the richest of the soil. In this sort of earth, Mr. P. imagines, it will be impracticable to cut canals, or even drains, as no grass will grow upon the banks, and the light earth crumbles away continually. To the climate, therefore, in every point, we are directed ultimately to refer the poverty of the soil.

"Fourteen days' hot sun scorches up the grass much in England; but what would be the effect of eight months' continued much hotter sun, the winter then setting-in in the course of two days with a severer frost than the sharpest we ever experience, and that generally without snow? When snow falls in America, there is always sun sufficient during the following day to melt it, and expose the soil to the frost. Under those circumstances grass cannot grow, and for want of produce all soils will become poor. Vol ii. p. 320.

Our author's meaning in the last sentence, appears to be, that without produce, no manure can be obtained, either animal or vegetable. If therefore a given quantity of land will not raise produce, and support stock, sufficient to pay the cultivator, and also provide a due course of manure for itself, the consequence must be deterioration, instead of improvement.

Even the vegetable earth, we are informed, instead of being moist and rich, is reduced, by the heat of American summers, to the lightness of chaff; animal manure is very much injured by the same cause, as its most valuable particles fly off by exhalation.

Another disadvantage resulting to the farmer from the climate, is described in the following terms.

"When the summer sets in, the spring crop must be got-in in a few days, or he had better never sow it at all. So that the cultivation of a farm in America is much more expensive than in England: and a man must have great force to do the business in so short a time. The case is the same with the harvest: for, when the grain begins to ripen, the sun is so intensely hot and the winds so much higher than generally in England, that, if it was not expeditiously harvested, they would shake it all out; and if a farmer has not people under his own immediate command to reap his harvest, he would be liable to lose some part of the crop; it not being possible to find men whom he can hire to do it." Vol. i. p. 209.

Thus

Thus the scarcity and uncertainty of hired labourers, is often an evil of greater magnitude than even the expense. The wages of a white man are from 5s. to 8s. per day (currency ;)* the expense of once ploughing, is from 20s. to 30s.

per acre.

Our author's opinion, therefore, of American farming, may thus be stated; from the scanty produce of the land, the dearness of every thing he buys, and the cheapness of every thing he sells, no farmer can enrich himself. If he undertakes no more land than himself and his family can manage, he may exist, but not with more comfort than an English cottager.

We must now close our Abstract of Mr. Parkinson's agricultural intelligence: those who are concerned to understand it in detail, will, doubtless, consult the work itself. We ought to remind the reader, that the estimates here given, apply to the neighbourhood of a populous and thriving city; where the farmer supplies his wants cheaper, and sells his produce with more ease, and less expense, than the distant settler.

The vicisitudes of the climate, and the expense of feeding, appear to be powerful impediments to the increase and improvement of cattle. Beef, veal, and pork, are of excellent quality, but mutton is represented as bad, and the sheep in general are said not to weigh above fifty or sixty pounds each. The fleece is small, but fine.

The several sorts of game and fowl are described with suitable minuteness, and the author has not forgotten to mention the great variety of troublesome insects, which infest the Americans in their persons and property. Among others, he notices Locusts, which appear in immense numbers every eleventh or fourteenth year, and attack the bark of young shoots, to the great damage of the ensuing crop of fruit.

Few of the fruits, except melons, apples, and peaches, equal the flavour of the English; the latter are wonderfully prolific, but from the want of buyers, unprofitable, great quantities being eaten by the pigs, or left to perish on the ground.

From the quickness of vegetation, the forest trees are shapely, but not durable; " oak they have none, equal to ours for ship building; and live oak, the best sort, is scarce and costly? Flax, and in some places hemp, is cultivated with some success; but Mr. P. thinks, that a faulty mode of preparation renders the manufactured product of both plants, more perishable than the European.

*As the author has been unpardonably negligent, in omitting to state which denomination he uses, the reader will observe that four dollars are equal to 30s. currency, or 11. sterling. Rev.

M4

Tobacco

Having assisted in a brewery at Baltimore, his opinion is probably correct, with regard to malt and hops; though it differs from the prevailing sentiment on this subject. He assures us, that American malt will not yield half the saccharine extract of the English, but that their hops are fully equal to ours, both in produce and quality.

Tobacco, rice, and cotton, are said to be profitable, and our author asserts, that no profit has ever been made from the land, except by planting.-Negroes, who alone cultivate these plants successfully, are cheaper to buy than to raise, as there are so many whom age, sickness, or infirmity, renders unserviceable. Among four hundred Negroes, General Washington had only seventy effective labourers. This champion of liberty, is said to have treated his slaves with more strictness, than any other planter. That he was exceedingly methodical, and sometimes arbitrary, in his conduct, is generally known; the following anecdote, among others in this work, illustrates the opinion.

'A man came to Mount-Vernon topay rent; and he had not the exact balance due to the General: when the money was counted, the General said "There wants four-pence." The man offered him a dollar, and desired him to put it to the next years' account. No, he must get the change, and leave the money on the table until he had got it. The man rode to Alexandria, which is nine miles from Mount-Vernon; and then the General settled the account.' Vol. ii. p. 438.

Mr. Parkinson mentions the kindness of this celebrated man, and of his other American friends, with becoming gratitude and respect; but the national character receives no favour in his delineation. We do not doubt, but he has charged the faults of individuals, too liberally, upon the whole community. To admit the various anecdotes he relates, as decisive of the prevailing dispositions, would be to believe-that avarice is their darling vice; that, being general, it is not restrained by the voice of public opinion; and, consequently, that its operation is peculiarly powerful and extensive, in blunting their feelings, sharpening their faculties, and animating their exertions: in short, that the Americans are the most cunning, adventurous, unprincipled knaves upon earth.

As Mr. Parkinson dabbles much in politics, we are surprized that he says not a syllable of any election or assembly, or of any part of their internal polity. He discovers, however, the most bitter animosity against their system of liberty and equality." He assures us, that it renders them lawless and licentious, that it destroys the rights of property, and the dignity of public office: that rebels resist the government, that parties to a suit insult the judge, that soldiers at a review sit down in defiance of their officers, that servants disown the

authority

authority of their masters, and (hinc dolor, hinc lachryma) that horses are ridden away, and orchards robbed, with impunity! Many anecdotes, indeed, recorded in this work, make it 'apparent, that petty offences are so little regarded by the courts of law, that individuals choose rather to submit to an injury without complaint, than to incur personal malice and popular disgust, by fruitless endeavours to punish the offender. Mr. P. remarks that for misdemeanors, the punishment is only labour on the highways; and intimates, that even in cases of murder, the plea of lunacy is often unwarrantably admitted, to the obstruction of public justice. From these abuses, as well as general observation, it is not unreasonable to conclude-that the love of liberty is often no other than a hatred of all restraint; that it springs from the predominance of corrupt and rebellious passions, rather than from a sense of right and expediency; and that, in such cases, it has little tendency to humanize the mind, to cultivate genuine virtue, or to establish the good order of society. The flame which has burnt so often in polluted censers, and assisted at the sacrifice of duty and happiness, will prove but "strange fire," when the enchantments of error and prejudice are dissolved.

It has been thought, that the price of labour in America, would render it a desirable place for a labourer. Mr. Parkinson observes, that from the expense of clothing, (double to that in England,) from the scarcity of work during the frosts of winter, and from the want of provision for age and sickness, there is as much distress and beggary to be met with in that country, as in any other, according to its population. Yet Philosophists have told us, that, in a land of freedom, there are neither thieves nor beggars!

Mr. P. relates many tales of woe, among emigrants of various classes: he assures us, that every farmer he met with had lost all his property, or was rapidly losing it; and that every Englishman he knew, lamented his emigration. He recommends no line of business but the mercantile. As a trading body he declares that the Americans are very poor, that their commerce is supported upon the credit they take of our merchants; that British property is substituted for cash, as a circulating medium, and that the most common wagers are a coat, or a pair of breeches. Possessing neither mines nor manufactories worthy of notice, the principal branches of their commerce, we are told, especially the carrying trade, will be cut off at a cessation of hostilities. To protect it from insult and injury, will require a powerful navy, to which the national funds must be, for a long time, inadequate. To the climate perhaps of America, we must attribute her difficulties. It is this which impoverishes her soil, this absorbs nearly all her inhabitants in its cultivation, this enhances the price

of

of labour, and thus ruins the hope of her manufactures, and shackles her commerce with heavy expense.

"But the back settlements are reported to be very fertile."Of these Mr. P. knows nothing, except by vague report. We hope in a succeeding Number, to present our readers, with an authentic picture of these colonies. As a caution, however, against settling there, our author wisely inserts, to the extent of more than seventy pages, a Narrative of the disasters that attended Col. Crawford's Expedition against the Indians, in 1782! and gravely congratulates himself on having avoided a similar fate. This is one of many instances, in which the rancour of disappointment, is much more evident than liberality or good sense. He must surely have been aware, that those occurrences took place during a contest, the parties to which are now in perfect amity; and that the places referred to, will soon be deemed the centre of the United States, rather than the frontier. Mr. Parkinson's politics seem to have been rather warm during his residence in America; it is probable, therefore, that he might hear from individual opponents, such sentiments, as we trust, the inhabitants in general are too wise to entertain. He would represent that the Americans are very unfriendly to the interest of Great Britain; that they look with envy on her naval power, and with jealousy at her commercial greatness; that the supremacy of the West Indies is their avowed object; and that their dis like is aggravated by our continued practice of searching vessels, and reclaiming British subjects who pass for Americans. We trust that no sinister event, or predominant influence, will ever shake that mutual confidence and friendship, which it is so much the interest of both nations to consolidate.

On the subject of Religion, our author's knowledge is very superficial, his opinions very bigotted, and his language very scurrilous. His wretched and vulgar style we should have passed over without censure, did not his clumsy attempts at wit, on this as well as other subjects, forfeit all claim to that indulgence. The absurd and indecent manner in which he sometimes mentions the Americans, certainly tends not only to degrade him as a man, but to discredit him as an author.

The length, however, to which we have extended this article, evinces the importance which we attach to the work itself, as suited to rectify many erroneous opinions, or at least to caution those whom it most concerns, against implicitly believing the reports of the ignorant and the interested. We shall conclude therefore, with calling their attention to a subject, which seems to demand investigation: it relates to the emigrations which have been so frequent from different parts of this realm.

"

Of those individuals who are deluded away from this country, some

pay