Pray, what is the reason that the Scots are in general more religious, more faithful, more honest, and industrious than the Irish?  I do not mean to insinuate national reflections, God forbid!  It ill becomes any man, and much less an American; but as I know men are nothing of themselves, and that they owe all their different modifications either to government or other local circumstances, there must be some powerful causes which constitute this great national difference.

Agreeable to the account which several Scotchmen have given me of the north of Britain, of the Orkneys, and the Hebride Islands, they seem, on many accounts, to be unfit for the habitation of men; they appear to be calculated only for great sheep pastures.  Who then can blame the inhabitants of these countries for transporting themselves hither?  This great continent must in time absorb the poorest part of Europe; and this will happen in proportion as it becomes better known; and as war, taxation, oppression, and misery increase there.  The Hebrides appear to be fit only for the residence of malefactors, and it would be much better to send felons there than either to Virginia or Maryland.  What a strange compliment has our mother country paid to two of the finest provinces in America!  England has entertained in that respect very mistaken ideas; what was intended as a punishment, is become the good fortune of several; many of those who have been transported as felons, are now rich, and strangers to the stings of those wants that urged them to violations of the law:  they are become industrious, exemplary, and useful citizens.  The English government should purchase the most northern and barren of those islands; it should send over to us the honest, primitive Hebrideans, settle them here on good lands, as a reward for their virtue and ancient poverty; and replace them with a colony of her wicked sons.  The severity of the climate, the inclemency of the seasons, the sterility of the soil, the tempestuousness of the sea, would afflict and punish enough.  Could there be found a spot better adapted to retaliate the injury it had received by their crimes?  Some of those islands might be considered as the hell of Great Britain, where all evil spirits should be sent.  Two essential ends would be answered by this simple operation.  The good people, by emigration, would be rendered happier; the bad ones would be placed where they ought to be.  In a few years the dread of being sent to that wintry region would have a much stronger effect than that of transportation.—­This is no place of punishment; were I a poor hopeless, breadless Englishman, and not restrained by the power of shame, I should be very thankful for the passage.  It is of very little importance how, and in what manner an indigent man arrives; for if he is but sober, honest, and industrious, he has nothing more to ask of heaven.  Let him go to work, he will have opportunities enough to earn a comfortable support, and even the means of