If neither of these projects will avail, I see nothing left us, but to truck and barter our goods, like the wild Indians, with each other, or with our too powerful neighbours; only with this disadvantage on our side, that the Indians enjoy the product of their own land, whereas the better half of ours is sent away without so much as a recompense in bugles, or glass, in return.

It must needs be a very comfortable circumstance, in the present juncture, that some thousand families are gone, or going, or preparing to go, from hence, and settle themselves in America.  The poorer sort, for want of work; the farmers whose beneficial bargains, are now become a rack-rent, too hard to be borne.  And those who have any ready money, or can purchase any, by the sale of their goods, or leases; because they find their fortunes hourly decaying; that their goods will bear no price, and that few or none, have any money to buy the very necessaries of life, are hastening to follow their departed neighbours.  It is true, corn among us, carries a very high price; but it is for the same reason, that rats, and cats, and dead horses, have been often bought for gold, in a town besieged.

There is a person of quality in my neighbourhood, who twenty years ago, when he was just come to age, being unexperienced, and of a generous temper, let his lands, even as times went then, at a low rate, to able tenants, and consequently by the rise of land, since that time, looked upon his estate, to be set at half value.  But numbers of these tenants, or their descendants are now offering to sell their leases by cant, even those which were for lives, some of them renewable for ever, and some fee-farms, which the landlord himself hath bought in, at half the price they would have yielded seven years ago.  And some leases let at the same time, for lives, have been given up to him, without any consideration at all.

This is the most favourable face of things at present among us, I say, among us of the North, who are esteemed the only thriving people of the kingdom:  And how far, and how soon, this misery and desolation may spread, is easy to foresee.

The vast sums of money daily carried off, by our numerous adventurers to America, have deprived us of our gold in these parts, almost as much as of our silver.

And the good wives who came[16] to our houses, offer us their pieces of linen, upon which their whole dependence lies, for so little profit, that it can neither half pay their rents, nor half support their families.

It is remarkable, that this enthusiasm spread among our northern people, of sheltering themselves in the continent of America, hath no other foundation, than their present insupportable condition at home.  I have made all possible inquiries, to learn what encouragement our people have met with, by any intelligence from those plantations, sufficient to make them undertake so tedious, and hazardous a voyage in all seasons of