Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 9).djvu/17

 *ery; he appreciated its patriarchal features and its real benefits for the negroes. He also saw that the masters suffered more deterioration by the system than the slaves; that the responsibility for the system rested not upon present, but historic conditions; and that wholesale denunciation was not only unjust, but useless.

In addition to his comments on this great social question, Flint throws much light on general conditions in the young West. He studies the spectacular drama of the camp-meeting revival not only from the point of picturesqueness, but of educational and religious development. He realizes the need of the people for education, but appreciates the provisions made therefor in public lands. Throughout the West he finds the saving remnant—people of culture and refinement, who welcome strangers with hospitality, and are laboring to erect a worthy civilization in this newest community. The social equality everywhere evident among whites pleases him, and he remarks not unkindly upon the general dislike for personal service that characterizes the ambitious West. His satire on the excess of the honorary titles of "major," "colonel," and "judge," as well as upon the readiness with which the "land of liberty" is vociferously proclaimed, is gentle and kindly.

But all these features of Flint's work are secondary to his economic study. Not only did he prove himself a wise and trained observer, but he was a scientific economist, and had come to the United States for research material. At each stage of his travels he sets forth the ratio between prices and wages, explains the industrial aspects, and the prospects for emigrants. Already, he tells us, nearly all the best land of Kentucky and Ohio is taken up. Settlement is flooding Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri,