This, however, is a subject on which it is not our intention to
expatiate here. What we say is, that, in all the relations of civil
life, Her people were shamefully and criminally neglected. They were
left without education, permitted to remain ignorant of the arts of
life, and of that industrial knowledge on which, or rather on the
application of which, all public prosperity is based.
And yet, although the people have great errors, without which no people
so long neglected can ever be found, and, although they have been for
centuries familiarized with suffering, yet it is absolute dread of
poverty that drives them from their native soil; They understand,
in fact, the progress of pauperism too well, and are willing to seek
fortune in any clime, rather than abide its approach to themselves--an
approach which they know is in their case inevitable and certain. For
instance, the very class of our countrymen that constitutes the great
bulk of our emigrants is to be found among those independent small
farmers who appear to understand something like comfort. One of these
men holding, say sixteen or eighteen acres, has a family we will suppose
of four sons and three daughters. This family grows up, the eldest son
marries, and the father, having no other way to provide for him, sets
apart three or four acres of his farm, on which he and his wife settle.
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