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breasts, tearing of hair, and flogging of backs. I was never more affected by any scene of public distress.

a general burst of tears, beating of With the ordinary phrase, perhaps rather more than ordinary sincerity, I am, dear Sir, ever yours, &c." "Mosgiel, Tuesday noon, Sept. 26, 1786."

Original Letter of BURNS.

(MS. in possession of a Gentleman in Mon

I

trose.) To Mr

"MY DEAR SIR,

This moment receive yours, receive it with the honest, hospitable warmth of a friend's welcome, whatever comes from you wakens always up the better blood about my heart which your kind little recollections of my parental friend carries as Far as it will go. 'Tis there, Sir, that man is blest! 'tis there, my friend, man feels a consciousness of something within him above the trodden clod! -the grateful reverence to the hoary, earthly author of his being,-the burning glow when he clasps the woman of his soul in his bosom,-the tender yearnings of heart for the little angels to whom he has given existence. These, nature has poured in milky streams about the human heart; and the man who never rouses them to action, by the inspiring influences of their proper objects, loses by far the most pleasurable part of his existence.

"My departure is uncertain, but I do not think it will be till after harvest. I will be on very short allowance of time indeed, if I do not comply with your friendly invitation.When it will be I don't know, but if I can make my wish good, I will endeavour to drop you a line sometime before. My best compliments to Mrs

; I should [be] equally mortified should I drop in when she is abroad but of that I suppose there is little chance.

"What I have wrote heaven knows, I have not time to review it: so accept of it in the beaten way of firiendship

}

Answers to Queries concerning the UNITED STATES of AMERICA. To the Editor,

SIR,

HAVING observed, in the Inver

ness Journal of the 27th of Oct. ult. a very distorted and disagreeable picture of the United States of America, I herewith send you a picture, drawn by a masterly hand, of the same United States, which I have reason to believe is extremely correct.

It has always seemed to me to be good policy in Britain, to cultivate the affections of her American offspring, and I am persuaded the Americans of the United States are not at all desirous of decoying any of our discontented people to cross the Atlantic and settle in their country. A population of more than six millions in their primary States, with doubling their numbers in the course of twenty years, can afford no cause for the United States to wish for British emigrants; nor can a Dog in a MangeJelousy in Britain, with respect to the Americans or any foreign nation, promote either her interest or her ho nour.

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country; and a person who had not paid some attention to the subject would, from the increase, not only of purchasers, but of settlers, be apt to think that a vast emigration had taken place from some foreign countries.The sale of lands is limited to two dollars an acre, by law, and this price is common to all parts of the public lands. Those lands which have what is called a clear title, are generally most in demand; this is particularly exemplified in the State of Ohio, where the surveys were so exactly made, and the plots so judiciously laid down, that there could be no dispute about boundary or previous settlement. Accordingly this state has encreased in settlements to an extent so extraordinary as to surpass any thing ever in this country in 1790 it had scarcely a white inhabitant, and was the hunting ground principally of the Shawanese, Wyandots, and Leeni Lenappe (or Delaware) tribes of Indians; purchases were made from those tribes and the whole obtained by successive purchases, and cessions, made voluntarily by the Indians and unforced by us. In 1802 its population had increased to such a degree as to authorise its becoming an independant member of the confederation; that is, to establish its own legislature, which were to make laws for internal concerns, and to send representatives to Congress for the concerns of the whole Confederacy of states; it must therefore have obtained, between 1790 and 1802, above 30,000 white inhabitants. This little sketch is connected with the subject of the question put; and shews by unquestionable data, the progress of settlement and population: the state is about 250 miles from E. to W. by 200 broadbetween 38' and 42° N. latitude and 5° West of Philadelphia. The climate is fine, the soil fertile, the surface of the country uneven, and variegated by

hill and dale.

This state is principally settled by emigrants from Pennsylvania, and sent

there in numbers, from Connecticut : Maryland has furnished a few, as have Massachusetts, Vermont, and the other Eastern States, as well as Virginia and N. Carolina: the preponderancy of Pennsylvanians is however perceptible both in the institutions, manners, and policy of the state. None of the states furnishing these emigrants have diminished their own population; for example, at our last election this state (Pennsylvania) gave 15,000 more votes than on any former election; and in the census, which will be taken in the year 1810, promises to add to our representation in Congress three or four additional members: Ohio is expected to have six, which has now but two; and Kentucky is expected to have four additional.

Georgia is the only one of the Southern States on the sea coast that increases; Tenessee, which is inland, is increasing rapidly; S. Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware are stationary; the latter rather decreasing: Maryland certainly is decreasing, as is North Carolina: but from different causes : the monopoly of lands in immense quantities, by which settlement and cultivation are retarded, and the existence of slavery, added to the comparative inferiority of the soil, affect Maryland: the same causes operate in Virginia: Delaware is, I regret to say, eaten up by ignorance, and what always follows, a degeneracy of the human species: the upper country of the three which compose it, is an exe ception, but the other two appear going back insensibly to a state of nature.

These observations answer your se cond question.

2. Which of the states is peopling fast

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and facilitating internal water navigation. Pennsylvania thrives from various causes; its climate; its beneficent institutions; the vast body of Irish, and their descendants, already settled, who have a strong attraction to each other; it is therefore the rendezvous of all who come from Ireland, and sends its thousands over the hills into the valleys of the Ohio, Mississippi, Alleghany, and even into the countries on the Missouri.

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3. Are there any people going to Louis siana, and from what States principally?

The emigration to Louisiana, the first two years after we obtained possession, was enormous. The habits of Americans are migratory now, as when the Farmers letters were written : and emigrants from foreign countries very soon catch the ruling passion, from the necessity which strangers usually are under of looking out for something to please them; and after looking for a long time for something that is like what they have been accustomed to, they acquire the new habit, and find themselves perfectly at home, often without perceiving the cause.— The emigrations to Louisiana were, from all the States of the Union, more perhaps from the states east of the Hudson, and from the sea coast cities, than from other quarters. All the young and adventurous, some few with -good morals, some hundreds with bad: all the pettyfogging lawyers, those who had been in Europe and learned extravagance and gambling; mercantile speculators; and some without any other motive than adventure, crowded into Louisiana; but among such habits there must necessarily be little of the temperance that is required in a low, moist, and hot climate, and none of the prudence that leads to the adaptation of the diet to the climate; there was of course great mortality, and emigration was soon reduced to a more rational order; though the unfortunate

Louisianians had to suffer from the vileness which boiled over from our pot not a little; and suffer still, though not in the same degree: they have been cursed with pettyfoggers and swindlers, and this will account to you for the quantity of disaffection which the traitor Burr found prepared for any desperate deed in that quarter. This state sent a few emigrants to Louisiana; a few that it was a blessing to this society to part with, and a curse to that to obtain, we sent, however, many industrious citizens, who do credit to themselves and to the state.

4. Are any of our people emigrating from New England to Canada and Nova Scotia ?

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About eight years ago, there were very numerous emigrations from the eastern states, and even from this state to Canada. From the county of Bucks, within 30 miles of Philadelphia, above sixty families of the religi ous sect of Menonists (pronounced here Meneese) emigrated and carried off their household goods in waggons drawn by six or eight horses: crownlands had been held out to them upon easy terms; but after two or three years residence they found that there was some difference between our laws and those of Upper Canada: many of them sought to obtain their former farms here without success; and I learn they have made a large settlement in the state of Ohio, on the Muskingum river, near a settlement called (after the royal palace near Vienna) Schoenbrunn; this I learned in consequence of having a tract of 100 acres of my own in that neighbourhood, which one of them offered to buy, but which I keep for one of my children or grandchildren.

The adventuring disposition of the eastern folks leads them constantly into Canada, and it is not uncommon to find families going into Canada making a settlement, wholly for the purpose of selling it again; the spirit of

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speculation has nursed up much depravity in the eastern States, to which the hypocrisy and profligacy of too nany of their clergy ministers too much. For unhappily the morality of religion has very much declined, and left little more than the ceremony and the mask in its place. There have been some emigrations to Nova Scotia, but wholly of the adventuring character; men who, as a home, think no more of Halifax than of Boston, nor of either, than of Ceylon or Kamschatka; they carry much activity and unconquerable enterprize, with habits well adapted for Buccaneers : their family connexions are the only link that bind them; they sometimes bring home great wealth, which does not compensate for the vices they import with them. We lose nothing by these emigrations; we may be said to gain by the loss. If we were at war, they would be to us a host, as they would arm vessels to practise their ethics, from which the vengeance of law only restrains them.

5. What Improvements are going on in any of your States, as to Agriculture, Manufactures, Canals, Roads, &c. ?

The progress of improvements of every description is greater than a superficial view, or than the bounds of a quire of this paper would enable me to enumerate. Many of my friends, who have never seen Europe, and who form opinions only by their reasoning upon what they know can be done, say that we are doing nothing; for nothing short of miracles, like the settlement of Ohio, or going six miles an hour against wind and tide by force of steam, will serve them.

We have the honour of discovering the art of navigating a vessel 160 feet keel, six miles an hour, without sails, and against wind and tide. This alone would do hononr to an age or a nation. We have these steam boats, as they are called, on the Hudson, where the tide runs 6 miles an hour; and, in

the Delaware, where it runs 4 miles an hour. Ours is only just begun ; you will be amused to learn that the mechanist who superintends the boat here is from the neighbourhood of Edinburgh, from the works they call something like the Kaltoun works: they say here he was one of those whom Downie and Watt had some concern with; however, he is here a very useful harmless man, and there is no danger of his setting the Delaware on fire. In the New York steam-boat there are four cabins; they can dine and lodge 100 persons, and they travel with the same ease and with as much and as good accommodation as you can obtain in the best regulated inn in Europe; the best wines and the strictest order and decorum; and they can go two or three hundred miles in all weathers within an hour of the regulated time. This is perhaps the greatest improvement we possess at present, it is to be extended to the Mississippi and Ohio without delay.

In the southern states, where individual intellect is advanced among those who enjoy leisure, and where all else are degraded by the presence of slavery, that cannot be got rid of without danger, the smaller improvements of arts and science, and of public improvement, make but little progress: they have, however, opened some important rivers, and completed some canals in South and North Carolina': in Virginia, they have done something of the same kind; a canal to unite the waters of the Chesapeake and Delaware, begun four years ago, lingers from want of funds; the spirit of commercial speculation drains all our funds, and our passions are launched with them on the ocean. But we go on still. Had our embargo continued 12 months, we should have astonished Europe; as it is, we astonish strangers. The best brick, and the best brick buildings in the world, are in this city; we have built, since the embargo was laid on in this city and suburbs,

above 500 three-storey brick houses,
which let from 400 to 600 dollars a-
year rent.
We have built in this ci-
ty two towers, one square 134 feet
high, one round 142 feet high, of
brick, and only to cast shot to shoot
birds; each of these can make one
ton of shot a-day; Louisiana gives
lead inexhaustible for ages.

Our sheep give as fine wool as any
of Spain, and the passion for these is
growing: twelve years since, mutton
was rarely seen in the market; now
every one likes and looks for it; and
we have superfine broad cloth made,
from our own wool, of which I paid
for the coat I wear (black) ten dollars
a-yard we have cassimeres, serges,
half cloths of all colours; and can in
a few years keep the old world to a
coat after their mad wars have left
them bare and naked.

Roads and bridges are advancing throughout the Union, but not half so fast as people wish. In agriculture the improvement has been great: you have heard of the Hessian fly, a farmer told me a few days since, that a certain remedy for that fly is good cultivation; they will not appear where the tillage is good: this, and the gypsum as a manure, has doubled our crops and our industry in this State: the States east and south of Pennsylvania are behind us as farmers, but the spirit is travelling; in Ohio they have obtained on this account the name of New Pennsylvanians. Every branch of art grows up among us, and prospers,

in despite of many natural, and not a few unnatural obstacles.

6. Does as much Sugar grow in Louisiana as will serve the United States? Is there any Coffee planted there yet?

that so far north as Vermont, the su
gar used is from the maple; and the
preservation of the sweeting, as the
Green mountain farmer said to me, is
as much a part of his domestic and
farming economy as the raising of his
crop. Very little
other
sugar of any
sort is used in Vermont.

7. Can we raise Hemp to serve our-
selves?

Yes, and all the world beside : in Kentucky they have turned their attention to it this last year; and they are now provided with enough to serve the United States, and abundance for Europe.

They have begun to weave sailcloth in the two extremes of the Union; in Kentucky and Rhode Island; the cloth for light topsails made at Rhode Island beats the Russian for texture and cheapness.

8. Are the numbers of the United States increasing?

Independent of the acquisition of Louisiana, which makes us 6 millons, we calculate that the next census will make us considerably more than 7,000,000, in the old States and terri

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There is no coffee produced for sale philosophy. in Louisiana. But the sugar is abundant, and the capacity to produce equal, not only to the consumption of the United States, but of all Europe. You will be surprised perhaps to learn

In Canada there cannot well be said to be more than two seasons of the year, summer and winter. The earth hath scarcely laid aside her mantle of snow, when you begin to feel the

force

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