LETTER II

ON THE SITUATION, FEELINGS, AND PLEASURES, OF AN AMERICAN FARMER


As you are the first enlightened European I have ever had the
pleasure of being acquainted with, you will not be surprised that I
should, according to your earnest desire and my promise, appear
anxious of preserving your friendship and correspondence. By your
accounts, I observe a material difference subsists between your
husbandry, modes, and customs, and ours; everything is local; could
we enjoy the advantages of the English farmer, we should be much
happier, indeed, but this wish, like many others, implies a
contradiction; and could the English farmer have some of those
privileges we possess, they would be the first of their class in the
world. Good and evil I see is to be found in all societies, and it
is in vain to seek for any spot where those ingredients are not
mixed. I therefore rest satisfied, and thank God that my lot is to
be an American farmer, instead of a Russian boor, or an Hungarian
peasant. I thank you kindly for the idea, however dreadful, which
you have given me of their lot and condition; your observations have
confirmed me in the justness of my ideas, and I am happier now than
I thought myself before. It is strange that misery, when viewed in
others, should become to us a sort of real good, though I am far
from rejoicing to hear that there are in the world men so thoroughly
wretched; they are no doubt as harmless, industrious, and willing to
work as we are. Hard is their fate to be thus condemned to a slavery
worse than that of our negroes. Yet when young I entertained some