Page:Works of the Late Doctor Benjamin Franklin (1793).djvu/293

283 but the government does not at preſent, whatever it may have done in former times, hire people to become ſettlers, by paying their paſſages, giving land, negroes, utenſils, flock, or my other kind of emolument whatſoever. In ſhort, America is the land of labour, and by no means what the Engliſh call Lubberland, and the French Pays de Cocagne, where the ſtreets are ſaid to be paved with half-peck loaves, the houſes tiled with pancakes, and where the fowls fly about ready roaſted, crying, Come eat me!

Who then are the kind of perſons to whom an emigration to America may be advantageous? and what are the advantages they may reaſonably expect?

Land being cheap in that country, from the vaſt foreſts ſtill void of inhabitants, and not likely to be occupied in an age to come, inſomuch that the propriety of an hundred acres of fertile foil full of wood may be obtained near the frontiers, in many places, for eight or ten guineas, hearty young labouring men, who underſtand the huſbandry of corn and cattle, which is nearly the lame in that country as in Europe, may eaſily eſtabliſh themſelves there. A little money ſaved of the good wages they receive there while they work for others, enables them to buy the land and begin their plantation, in which they are aſſiſted by the good-will of their neighbours, and ſome credit. Multitudes of poor people from England, Ireland, Scotland, and Germany, have by this means in a few years become wealthy farmers, who in their own countries, where all the lands are fully occupied, and the wages of labour low, could never have emerged from the mean condition wherein they were born.

From the ſalubrity of the air, the healthineſs of the climate, the. plenty of good provisions,