Page:Immigration and the Commissioners of Emigration of the state of New York.djvu/31

Rh the French colonies, the youngest of which, Algiers, has ever since its first days been weak, and is almost dying from the effects of government care; and at the efforts of the Belgian Government to regulate the work of their colonists in Central America by military discipline, and compare them with the flourishing, thriving, and prosperous condition of the English colonies in America and Australia. The difference in the results of the two systems is too striking to require any further demonstration. In this country we had both systems working side by side in New France and New England. French rule, which, with its great captains, brave warriors, and indefatigable priests, tried to seize upon and fetter a continent, is a memory of the past; but New England, the growth of which—to use the eloquent language of Francis Parkman—was the result of the aggregate efforts of a busy multitude, each in his narrow circle toiling for himself, to gather competence and wealth—New England influences the destinies of a whole continent, and is one of the civilizing factors of the world.

I have shown, in a book on German immigration to this State, the third German edition of which is just published by Mr. E. Steiger, of this city, how the above-mentioned Germans, who were settled on the upper Hudson by the English Government, were a motley set of shiftless adventurers and vagabonds so long as they depended on the colonial authorities; but these same men, when left to themselves as settlers in the Schoharie and Mohawk valleys, soon became brave and daring pioneers, well-to-do farmers, and good citizens, who formed a living barrier against the inroads of the French and Indians, and conquered the finest parts of our noble State for civilization.

Again, it was from no whim of the immigrant that he avoided the Southern States while they were cursed with slavery; for a land can have no civil liberty in which freedom of labor and the dignity wherewith respectable employment is invested do not exist. In natural advantages the North-west is much inferior to the northern States of the South. Middle and South Virginia, for instance, are gardens of Eden, which cannot be excelled by any State of the Union, and yet they are partly in a primeval state. Henceforth the North and Europe will send their