Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 11).djvu/196

 *fore," continues Mr. L., "decline all transactions {193} with Americans, it being impossible with safety to buy or sell any thing of importance under their present paper system. I keep my money in the funds. Housekeeping is very cheap; 100lbs. of fine flour costs only two dollars; a fine fat sheep, two dollars; beef equally cheap, three or four cents, two-pence per pound, the hide and tallow being thought the most valuable; one dozen of fat fowls from three quarters to one dollar. Land here gives a man no importance; store-keepers and clerks rank much above farmers, who are never seen in genteel parties and circles. Yet, here is the finest arable and pasture land in the known world, on which grass, the most luxuriant, is seen rotting for want of cattle. Just kill a few of the large trees (where there is no underwood) and you have a beautiful clover-*field and other grass intermixed, as ever art elsewhere produced. There is no laying down here; it is all done by nature as if by magic. The land is full of all useful grass seeds, which only want sun and air to call them into a smothering superabundance. But what is land, however rich, without population to cultivate it or a market to consume its produce, which is here bought much under what either I or you could raise it for. Farmers are consequently men of no importance. They live, it is true, and will always live, but I much doubt if ever the important English farmer could be satisfied with such living and farming. I feel great {194} difficulty in advising any friends on the subject of emigration. I mean to wait two years longer before I do it. Liberty and independence, of which you and I thought so much and so highly, while on the other side of the Atlantic, sink and fade in value on a nearer view. Nobody here properly appreciates, but almost all abuse, this boasted liberty. Liberty here