who but a few years before was as poor as himself.  This encourages him much, he begins to form some little scheme, the first, alas, he ever formed in his life.  If he is wise he thus spends two or three years, in which time he acquires knowledge, the use of tools, the modes of working the lands, felling trees, etc.  This prepares the foundation of a good name, the most useful acquisition he can make.  He is encouraged, he has gained friends; he is advised and directed, he feels bold, he purchases some land; he gives all the money he has brought over, as well as what he has earned, and trusts to the God of harvests for the discharge of the rest.  His good name procures him credit.  He is now possessed of the deed, conveying to him and his posterity the fee simple and absolute property of two hundred acres of land, situated on such a river.  What an epocha in this man’s life!  He is become a freeholder, from perhaps a German boor—­he is now an American, a Pennsylvanian, an English subject.  He is naturalised, his name is enrolled with those of the other citizens of the province.  Instead of being a vagrant, he has a place of residence; he is called the inhabitant of such a county, or of such a district, and for the first time in his life counts for something; for hitherto he has been a cypher.  I only repeat what I have heard many say, and no wonder their hearts should glow, and be agitated with a multitude of feelings, not easy to describe.  From nothing to start into being; from a servant to the rank of a master; from being the slave of some despotic prince, to become a free man, invested with lands, to which every municipal blessing is annexed!  What a change indeed!  It is in consequence of that change that he becomes an American.  This great metamorphosis has a double effect, it extinguishes all his European prejudices, he forgets that mechanism of subordination, that servility of disposition which poverty had taught him; and sometimes he is apt to forget too much, often passing from one extreme to the other.  If he is a good man, he forms schemes of future prosperity, he proposes to educate his children better than he has been educated himself; he thinks of future modes of conduct, feels an ardour to labour he never felt before.  Pride steps in and leads him to everything that the laws do not forbid:  he respects them; with a heart-felt gratitude he looks toward the east, toward that insular government from whose wisdom all his new felicity is derived, and under whose wings and protection he now lives.  These reflections constitute him the good man and the good subject.  Ye poor Europeans, ye, who sweat, and work for the great—­ ye, who are obliged to give so many sheaves to the church, so many to your lords, so many to your government, and have hardly any left for yourselves—­ye, who are held in less estimation than favourite hunters or useless lap-dogs—­ye, who only breathe the air of nature, because it cannot be withheld from you; it is here that ye can conceive the possibility