not, any more than their increasing numbers, a thing to be passed
over in silence. In every colony the "starving time," even if it
had ever existed, was now no more than an ancient tradition.
"Every man of industry has it in his power to live well,"
according to William Smith of New York, "and many are the
instances of persons who came here distressed in their poverty
who now enjoy easy and plentiful fortunes." If Americans were not
always aware that they were rich men individually, they were at
all events well instructed, by old-world visitors who came to
observe them with a certain air of condescension, that
collectively at least their material prosperity was a thing to be
envied even by more advanced and more civilized peoples.
Therefore any man called upon to pay a penny tax and finding his
pocket bare might take a decent pride in the fact, which none
need doubt since foreigners like Peter Kalm found it so, that
"the English colonies in this part of the world have increased so
much in...their riches, that they almost vie with old England."

That the colonies might possibly "vie with old England," was a
notion which good Americans could contemplate with much
equanimity; and even if the Swedish traveler, according to a
habit of travelers, had stretched the facts a point or two, it
was still abundantly clear that the continental colonies were
thought to be, even by Englishmen themselves, of far greater
importance to the mother country than they had formerly been.
Very old men could remember the time when English statesmen and
economists, viewing colonies as providentially designed to
promote the increase of trade, had regarded the northern colonies
as little better than heavy incumbrances on the Empire, and their
commerce scarcely worth the cost of protection. It was no longer