Complete Works of Edmund Burke

by Edmund Burke

  CHAP. XI.

  I Find it of late a notion pretty current, that proprietary governments are a sort of check to the growth of the colonies which they superintend. It is certain, that abuses have been, and still do subsist in that species of government; and abuses of as bad a kind may, I believe, be found by persons of no great penetration in all our governments; but if there were any truth in this observation, the province of Pensylvania would prove an illustrious exception to it.

  William Pen in his capacity of a divine, and of a moral writer, is certainly not of the first rank; and his works are of no great estimation, except amongst his own people; but in his capacity of a legislator, and the founder of so flourishing a commonwealth, he deserves great honour amongst all mankind; a commonwealth, which in the space of about seventy years, from a beginning of a few hundreds of refugees and indigent men, has grown to be a numerous and flourishing people; a people who from a perfect wilderness have brought their territory to a state of great cultivation, and filled it with wealthy and populous towns; and who in the midst of a fierce and lawless race of men, have preserved themselves with unarmed hands and passive principles, by the rules of moderation and justice, better than any other people has done by policy and arms. For Mr. Pen, when for his father’s services, and by his own interest at court, he obtained the inheritance of this country and it’s government, saw that he could make the grant of value to him only by making the country as agreeable to all people, as ease and good government could make it. To this purpose he began by purchasing the soil, at a very low rate indeed, from the original possessors, to whom it was of little use. By this cheap act of justice at the beginning, he made all his dealings for the future the more easy, by prepossessing the Indians with a favourable opinion of him and his designs. The other part of his plan, which was to people this country, after he had secured the possession of it, he saw much facilitated by the uneasiness of his brethren the quakers in England, who refusing to pay tythes and other church dues, suffered a great deal from the spiritual courts. Their high opinion of and regard for the man who was an honour to their new church, made them the more ready to follow him over the vast ocean into an untried climate and country. Neither was he himself wanting in any thing which could encourage them. For he expended large sums in transporting and finding them in all necessaries and not aiming at a hidden profit, he disposed of his land at a very light purchase. But what crowned all, was that noble charter of privileges, by which he made them as free as any people in the world; and which has since drawn such vast numbers of so many different persuasions, and such various countries, to put themselves under the protection of his laws. He made the most perfect freedom, both religious and civil, the basis of this establishment; and this has done more towards the settling of the province, and towards the settling of it in a strong and permanent manner, than the wisest regulations could have done upon any other plan. All persons who profess to believe one God, are freely tolerated; those who believe in Jesus Christ, of whatever denomination, are not excluded from employments and posts.

  This great man lived to see an extensive country called after his own name; he lived to see it peopled by his own wisdom, the people free and flourishing, and the most flourishing people in it of his own persuasion; he lived to lay the foundations of a splendid and wealthy city; he lived to see it promise every thing from the situation which he himself had chosen, and the encouragement which he himself had given it; he lived to see all this, but he died in the Fleet prison.

  It is but just, that in such a subject we should allot a little room, to do honour to those great men, whose virtue and generosity have contributed to the peopling of the earth, and to the freedom and happiness of mankind; who have preferred the interest of a remote posterity, and times unknown, to their own fortunes, and to the quiet and security of their own lives. Now Great Britain, and all America, reap great benefits from his labours and his losses; and his posterity have a vast estate out of the quit-rents of that province, whose establishment was the ruin of their predecessor’s moderate fortune.

  CHAP. XII.

  PENSYLVANIA is inhabited by upwards of two hundred and fifty thousand people, half of whom are Germans, Swedes or Dutch. Here you see the quakers, churchmen, calvinists, lutherans, catholics, methodists, menists, moravians, independents, the anabaptists, and the dumplers, a sort of German sect that live in something like a religious society, wear long beards, and a habit resembling that of friars; in short, the diversity of people, religions, nations, and languages here, is prodigious, and the harmony in which they live together, no less edifying. For though every man who wishes well to religion, is sorry to see the diversity which prevails, and would by all humane and honest methods endeavour to prevent it; yet when once the evil has happened, when there is no longer an union of sentiments, it is glorious to preserve at least an union of affections; it is a beautiful prospect, to see men take and give an equal liberty; to see them live, if not as belonging to the same church, yet to the same christian religion; and if not to the same religion, yet to the same great fraternity of mankind. I do not observe, that the quakers who had, and who still have in a great measure, the power in their hands, have made use of it in any sort to persecute; except in the single case of George Keith, whom they first imprisoned, and then banished out of the province. This Keith was originally a minister of the church of England, then a quaker, and afterwards returned to his former ministry. But whilst he remained with the friends, he was a most troublesome and litigious man; was for pushing the particularities of quakerism to yet more extravagant lengths, and for making new refinements, even where the most enthusiastic thought they had gone far enough; which raised such a storm, as shook the church, he then adhered to, to the very foundations.

  This little sally into intolerance, as it is a single instance, and with great provocation, ought by no means to be imputed to the principles of the quakers, considering the ample and humane latitude they have allowed in all other respects. It was certainly a very right policy to encourage the importation of foreigners into Pensylvania, as well as into our other colonies. By this we are great gainers without any diminution of the inhabitants of Great Britain. But it has been frequently observed, and as it should seem, very justly complained of, that they are left still foreigners, and likely to continue so for many generations; as they have schools taught, books printed, and even the common news paper in their own language; by which means, and that they possess large tracts of the country, without any intermixture of English, there is no appearance of their blending and becoming one people with us. This certainly is a great irregularity, and the greater, as these foreigners by their industry, frugality, and a hard way of living, in which they greatly exceed our people, have in a manner thrust them out in several places; so as to threaten the colony with the danger of being wholly foreign in language, manners, and perhaps even inclinations. In the year 1750, were imported into Pensylvania and it’s dependencies four thousand three hundred and seventeen Germans, whereas of British and Irish, but one thousand arrived; a considerable number, if it was not so vastly overballanced by that of the foreigners.

  I do by no means think that this sort of transplantations ought to be discouraged; I only observe along with others, that the manner of their settlement ought to be regulated, and means sought to have them naturalized in reality.

  The present troubles have very unhappily reversed the system so long pursued, and with such great success in this part of the world. The Pensylvanians have suffered severely by the incursions of the savage Americans as well as their neighbours; but the quakers could not be prevailed upon, by what did not directly affect those of their own communion, (for they were out of the way of mischief in the more settled parts,) to relinquish their pacific principles; for which reason a considerable opposition, in which, however, we must do the quakers the justice to observe they were not unanimous, was made both within their assembly, as well as without doors, against granting any money to carry on the war; and th
e same, or a more vigorous opposition, was made against passing a militia bill. A bill of this kind has at length passed, but scarcely such as the circumstances of the country, and the exigencies of the times required. It may perhaps appear an error, to have placed so great a part of the government in the hands of men, who hold principles directly opposite to it’s end and design. As a peaceable, industrious, honest people, the quakers cannot be too much cherished; but surely they cannot themselves complain, that when by their opinions they make themselves sheep, they should not be entrusted with the office, since they have not the nature of dogs.

  CHAP. XIII.

  THERE are so many good towns in the province of Pensylvania, even exceeding the capitals of some other provinces, that nothing could excuse our passing them by, had not Philadelphia drawn our attention wholly to itself. This city stands upon a tongue of land, immediately at the confluence of two fine rivers, the Delawar and the Schulkil. It is disposed in the form of an oblong, designed to extend two miles, from river to river; this longest stretch is laid out upon the original plan, to compose eight parallel streets, all of two miles in length; these were to have been intersected by sixteen others, each in length a mile, broad, spacious, and even; with proper spaces left for the public buildings, churches, and market-places. In the center is a square of ten acres, round which most of the public buildings are disposed. The two principal streets of the city are each one hundred feet wide, and most of the houses have a small garden and orchard; from the rivers are cut several canals, equally agreeable and beneficial. The kays are spacious and fine; the principal kay is two hundred feet wide, and to this a vessel of five hundred tons may lay her broadside; the warehouses are large, numerous and commodious, and the docks for ship-building every way well adapted to their purposes. A great number of vessels have been built here; twenty have been upon the stocks at a time. This city contains, exclusive of warehouses and outhouses, about two thousand houses; most of them of brick, and well built; it is said there are several of them worth four or five thousand pounds. The inhabitants are now about thirteen thousand.

  There are in this city a great number of very wealthy merchants, which is no way surprising, when one considers the great trade which it carries on with the English, French, Spanish and Dutch colonies in America; with the Azores, the Canaries, and the Madeira islands; with Great Britain and Ireland; with Spain, Portugal and Holland, and the great profits which are made in many branches of this commerce. Besides the quantity of all kinds of the produce of this province which is brought down the rivers Delawar and Schulkil (the former of which is navigable for vessels of one sort or other more than two hundred miles above Philadelphia, and the other for very near an hundred) the Dutch employ between eight and nine thousand waggons, drawn each by four horses, in bringing the product of their farms to this market. In the year 1749, three hundred and three vessels entered inwards at this port, and two hundred and ninety-one cleared outwards. There are at the other ports of this province custom-house officers, but the foreign trade in these places is not worth notice.

  The city of Philadelphia, though, as it may be judged, far from compleating the original plan; yet so far as it is built, it is carried on conformably to it, and increases in the number and beauty of it’s buildings every day. And as for the province, of which this city is the capital, there is no part of British America in a more growing condition. In some years more people have transported themselves into Pensylvania, than into all the other settlements together. In 1729, six thousand two hundred and eight persons came to settle here as passengers or servants, four fifths of whom at least were from Ireland. In short, this province has increased so greatly from the time of it’s first establishment, that lands were given by Mr. Pen at first at the rate of twenty pounds for a thousand acres, reserving only a shilling, every hundred acres for quit-rent, and this in some of the best situated parts of the province; but now at a great distance from navigation, land is granted at twelve pounds the hundred acres, and a quit-rent of four shillings reserved; and the land which is near Philadelphia, rents for twenty shillings the acre. In many places, and at the distance of several miles from that city, land sells for twenty years purchase.

  The Pensylvanians are an industrious and hardy people; they are most of them substantial, though but a few of the landed people can be considered as rich; but they are all well lodged, well fed, and, for their condition, well clad too; and this at the more easy rate, as the inferior people manufacture most of all their own wear both linens and woollens. There are but few blacks, not in all the fortieth part of the people of the province.

  CHAP. XIV. VIRGINIA.

  THE whole country which the English now possess in North America, was at first called Virginia; but by parcelling of several portions of it into distinct grants and governments, the country which still bears the name, is now reduced to that tract which has the river Potowmack upon the North; the bay of Chesapeak upon the East; and Carolina upon the South. To the Westward the grants extend it to the South-Sea; but their planting goes no farther than the great Allegany mountains, which boundaries leave this province in length two hundred and forty miles, and in breadth about two hundred, lying between the fifty-fisth and fortieth degrees of North latitude.

  The whole face of this country is so extremely low towards the sea, that when you are come even within fifteen fathom soundings you can hardly distinguish land from the mast head. However, all this coast of America has one useful particularity, that you know your distance exactly by the soundings, which uniformly and gradually diminish as you approach the land. The trees appear as if they rose out of the water, and afford the stranger a very uncommon, and not a disagreeable view. In sailing to Virginia or Maryland, you pass a streight between two points of land, called the Capes of Virginia, which opens a passage into the bay of Chesapeak, one of the largest and safest bays perhaps in the world; for it enters the country near three hundred miles from the South to the North, having the Eastern side of Maryland, and a small portion of Virginia on the same peninsula, to cover it from the Atlantic ocean. This bay is about eighteen miles broad for a considerable way, and seven where it is narrowest, the waters in most places being nine fathom deep. Through it’s whole extent it receives both on the Eastern and Western side a vast number of fine navigable rivers. Not to mention those of Maryland, from the side of Virginia it receives James River, York River, the Rappahannock, and the Potowmack.

  All these great rivers, in the order they are here set down from South to North, discharge themselves with several smaller ones into the bay of Chesapeak; and they are all not only navigable themselves for very large vessels a prodigious way into the country, but have so many creeks, and receive such a number of smaller navigable rivers, as renders the communication of all parts of this country infinitely more easy than that of any country, without exception, in the world. The Potowmack is navigable for near two hundred miles, being nine miles broad at it’s mouth, and for a vast way not less than seven. The other three are navigable upwards of eighty, and in the windings of their several courses approach one another so nearly, that the distance between one and the other is in some parts not more than ten, sometimes not above five miles; whereas in others there is fifty miles space between each of these rivers. The planters load and unload vessels of great burthen each at his own door; which, as their commodities are bulky, and of small value in proportion to their bulk, is a very fortunate circumstance, else they could never afford to send their tobacco to market low as they sell it, and charged as it is in England, with a duty of six times it’s original value.

  The climate and soil of Virginia was undoubtedly much heightened in the first descriptions for political reasons; but after making all the necessary abatements which experience since taught us, we still find it a most excellent country. The heats in summer are excessively great, but not without the allay of refreshing sea breezes. The weather is changeable, and the changes sudden and violent. Their winter frosts come on without the least warning
. After a warm day, towards the setting in of winter, so intense a cold often succeeds as to freeze over the broadest and deepest of their great rivers in one night, but these frosts, as well as their rains, are rather violent than of long continuance. They have frequent and violent thunder and lightning, but it does rarely any mischief. In general the sky is clear, and the air thin, pure, and penetrating.

  The soil in the low grounds of Virginia is a dark fat mould, which for many years without any manure, yields plentifully whatever is committed to it. The soil as you leave the rivers becomes light and sandy, is sooner exhausted than the low country, but is yet of a warm and generous nature, which helped by a kindly sun, yields tobacco and corn extremely well. There is no better wheat than what is produced in this province and Maryland; but the culture of tobacco employs all their attention, and almost all their hands; so that they scarcely cultivate wheat enough for their own use.

  It may be judged from the climate and the soil I have described, in what excellence and plenty every sort of fruit is found in Virginia. Their forests are full of timber trees of all kinds; and their plains are covered for almost the whole year with a prodigious number of flowers, and flowering shrubs, of colours so rich, and of a scent so fragrant, that they occasioned the name of Florida to be originally given to this country. This country produces several medicinal herbs and roots, particularly the snake root; and of late the celebrated ginseng of the Chinese has been discovered there.