Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 11).djvu/137

 rarely forbidden or punished for wrong doing, being only kindly solicited to do right; nor is strict discipline tolerated in schools. Hence respect and obedience to parents, guardians, masters, and governors, is never implanted, or soon eradicated. Authority, in consequence, whether public or private, civil or religious, is neither feared, nor willingly obeyed, through any period of life.

Sunday, 8th.—I heard this morning a Scotchman, Dr. Laurie, who at the end of every sentence {122} seems to have finished his oration. He appeared to me to be a man of but little talent. The psalms in use here would disgrace a school-boy's theme. My first impressions on the subject of religious worship in America are not removed. Religion still appears to me to be a matter little understood and much less regarded than in England.

Doctor Dawes and Friend Steed.—The former has bought a farm of 400 acres of poor land, and no buildings, seven miles from this city, at 10 dollars an acre. The latter (Steed) might engage himself at 300 or 400 dollars a year and board. What would they have more? Both, however, are eternally croaking, and write home unfavourable reports. They yet concede to me this fact; namely, that in this country lives a population of several millions, rapidly increasing in an unprecedented degree, and living (blacks excepted) as a whole, in a state of society and animal ease, greater than in any other country since the world began. My friend Wilson, of Houghton, Hunts. is much mistaken in his statements, in which he endeavours to prove a net annual loss of 146l. in cultivating 200 acres of land in America.

9th.—I this day visited Alexandria. When the British invaded it last war, they took away and freighted with