r a
nation scattered in the boundless regions of America resembles rays
diverging from a focus. All the rays remain, but the heat is gone. Their
power consisted in their concentration: when they are dispersed, they
have no effect.

It may be thought that they are happier by the change; but they are not
happy as a nation, for they are a nation no longer. As they contribute
not to the prosperity of any community, they must want that security,
that dignity, that happiness, whatever it be, which a prosperous
community throws back upon individuals.

The inhabitants of Col have not yet learned to be weary of their heath
and rocks, but attend their agriculture and their dairies, without
listening to American seducements.

There are some however who think that this emigration has raised terrour
disproportionate to its real evil; and that it is only a new mode of
doing what was always done. The Highlands, they say, never maintained
their natural inhabitants; but the people, when they found themselves too
numerous, instead of extending cultivation, provided for themselves by a
more compendious method, and sought better fortune in other countries.
They did not indeed go away in collective bodies, but withdrew invisibly,
a few at a time; but the whole number of fugitives was not less, and the
difference between other times and this, is only the same as between
evaporation and effusion.

This is plausible, but I am afraid it is not true. Those who went
before, if they were not sensibly missed, as the argument supposes, must
have gone either in less number, or in a manner less detrimental, than at
present; because formerly there was no complaint. Those who then left
the country were generally the idle dependants on overburdened families,
or men who had no property; and therefore carried away only themselves.
In the present eagerness of emigration, families, and almost communities,
go away together. Those who were considered as prosperous and wealthy
sell their stock and carry away the money. Once none went away but the
useless and poor; in some parts there is now reason to fear, that none
will stay but those who are too poor to remove themselves, and too
useless to be removed at the cost of others.

Of antiquity there is not more knowledge in Col than in other places; but
every where something may be gleaned.

How ladies were portioned, when there was no money, it would be difficult
for an Englishman to guess. In 1649