Page:Works of the Late Doctor Benjamin Franklin (1793).djvu/283

273 would be more becoming the gratitude they owed to the Divine Being, if, inſtead of a faſt, they ſhould proclaim a thankſgiving. His advice was taken; and from that day to this they have, in every year, obſerved circumſtances of public felicity ſufficient to furniſh employment for a thankſgiving day; which is therefore conſtantly ordered and religiouſly obſerved.

I ſee in the public newſpapers of different ſtates frequent complaints of hard times, deadneſs of trade, ſcarcity of money, &c. It is not my intention to aſſert or maintain that theſe complaints are entirely without foundation. There can be no country or nation exiſting, in which there will not be ſome people ſo circumſtanced as to find it hard to gain a livelihood; people who are not in the way of any profitable trade, and with whom money is ſcarce, becauſe they have nothing to give in exchange for it; and it is always in the power of a ſmall number to make a great clamour. But let us take a cool view of the general ſtate of our affairs, and perhaps the proſpect will appear leſs gloomy than has been imagined.

The great buſineſs of the continent is agriculture. For one artiſan, or merchant, I ſuppoſe, we have at leaſt one hundred farmers, by far the greateſt part cultivators of their own fertile lands, from whence many of them draw not only food neceſſary for their ſubſiſtence, but the materials of their clothing, ſo as to need very few foreign ſupplies; while they have a ſurplus of productions to diſpoſe of, whereby wealth is gradually accumulated. Such has been the goodneſs of Divine Providence to theſe regions, and ſo favourable the climate, that, ſince the three or four years of hardſhip in the firſt ſettlement of our fathers here, a famine or ſcarcity has never been heard of among us; on the contrary, though