ADVERTISEMENT

[To the first edition, 1782.]

The following Letters are the genuine production of the American Farmer whose name they bear.  They were privately written to gratify the curiosity of a friend; and are made public, because they contain much authentic information, little known on this side the Atlantic; they cannot therefore fail of being highly interesting to the people of England, at a time when everybody’s attention is directed toward the affairs of America.

That these letters are the actual result of a private correspondence may fairly be inferred (exclusive of other evidence) from the style and manner in which they are conceived:  for though plain and familiar, and sometimes animated, they are by no means exempt from such inaccuracies as must unavoidably occur in the rapid effusions of a confessedly inexperienced writer.

Our Farmer had long been an eye-witness of transactions that have deformed the face of America:  he is one of those who dreaded, and has severely felt, the desolating consequences of a rupture between the parent state and her colonies:  for he has been driven from a situation, the enjoyment of which the reader will find pathetically described in the early letters of this volume.  The unhappy contest is at length, however, drawing toward a period; and it is now only left us to hope, that the obvious interests and mutual wants of both countries, may in due time, and in spite of all obstacles, happily re-unite them.

Should our Farmer’s letters be found to afford matter of useful entertainment to an intelligent and candid public, a second volume, equally interesting with those now published, may soon be expected.

ADVERTISEMENT

[To the Second Edition, 1783.]

Since the publication of this volume, we hear that Mr. St. John has accepted a public employment at New York.  It is therefore, perhaps, doubtful whether he will soon be at leisure to revise his papers, and give the world a second collection of the American Farmer Letters.

TO THE ABBE RAYNAL, F.R.S.

Behold, Sir, an humble American Planter, a simple cultivator of the earth, addressing you from the farther side of the Atlantic; and presuming to fix your name at the head of his trifling lucubrations.  I wish they were worthy of so great an honour.  Yet why should not I be permitted to disclose those sentiments which I have so often felt from my heart?  A few years since, I met accidentally with your Political and Philosophical History, and perused it with infinite pleasure.  For the first time in my life I reflected on the relative state of nations; I traced the extended ramifications of a commerce which ought to unite but now convulses the world; I admired that universal benevolence, that diffusive goodwill, which is not