[* See Mr. Cobbett’s Letter to Mr. Birbeck on his “Letters from the Illinois.”]

First, Any person of respectability upon emigrating to this colony, is given as much land as would cost him four hundred pounds in the United States.

Secondly, He is allowed as many servants as he may require; and the wages which he is bound to pay them, are not one third the amount of the price of labour in America.

Thirdly, He, his family and servants, are victualled at the expence of the government for six months.

These are three considerations of great importance to the emigrant, and quite peculiar to this colony:  added to which the value of the produce of this gratuitous land and labour is three times as great as in the Illinois, as will be seen by a comparison of the prices of produce there as given by Messrs. Birbeck and Fearon, and the prices of similar produce as stated in the first part of this work.  It is true that there is not the same unlimited market as in America; but it must be evident, that, if the price of labour were even equal, the colonist who could dispose of one third of his crops, would be in a better condition than if he were established in the Illinois, and could find vent for the whole.  The market, however, has never been circumscribed to this degree in periods of the greatest abundance; and the immense arrivals of convicts, that have been daily taking place for the last three years, have increased the consumptive powers of the colony so considerably, that there has at most been but a very trifling surplus in the barns of the farmers at the close of the year.  On the other hand, all articles of foreign growth and manufacture are in general much cheaper than in the Illinois, and the other remote parts of the American Union, provided the purchaser has ready money, and is not under the necessity of having recourse to secondary agents for goods on long credit.

Here, then, are many powerful reasons why persons bent on emigration should prefer this colony to America.  The only point is whether the latter can throw any weightier arguments into the opposite scale.  What may be urged on the other side of the question, may, I apprehend, be comprised under these two heads:  first, the greater contiguity of the United States to this country, and the consequent ease and cheapness with which emigration thither may be effected; and, secondly, the superiority of their government.

The first of these points merits very little consideration, except in the instance of those who have not the means of choosing between the two countries.  If a person only possess the power of removing to that which is the more contiguous, eligibility is out of the question:  he is no longer a free agent.  But the difference in the cost of emigrating is far from being so considerable as might be imagined on a mere view of their comparative distances from this country.  I understand that a gentleman of great experience and respectability