The best people in
the mother-country will generally be the worst in the colonies; the worst
at home will be the best abroad. Or, perhaps, I may state it less
offensively thus:--The colonists of a well governed-country will
degenerate; those of an ill-governed country will improve. I am now
considering the natural tendency of such colonists if left to themselves;
of course, a direct act of the legislature of the mother-country will break
in upon this. Where this tendency is exemplified, the cause is obvious. In
countries well governed and happily conditioned, none, or very few, but
those who are desperate through vice or folly, or who are mere trading
adventurers, will be willing to leave their homes and settle in another
hemisphere; and of those who do go, the best and worthiest are always
striving to acquire the means of leaving the colony, and of returning to
their native land. In ill-governed and ill-conditioned countries, on the
contrary, the most respectable of the people are willing and anxious to
emigrate for the chance of greater security and enlarged freedom; and if
they succeed in obtaining these blessings in almost any degree, they have
little inducement, on the average, to wish to abandon their second and
better country.
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