this planet? No! urged by a variety of motives, here they came.
Every thing has tended to regenerate them; new laws, a new mode of
living, a new social system; here they are become men: in Europe
they were as so many useless plants, wanting vegetative mould, and
refreshing showers; they withered, and were mowed down by want,
hunger, and war; but now by the power of transplantation, like all
other plants they have taken root and flourished! Formerly they were
not numbered in any civil lists of their country, except in those of
the poor; here they rank as citizens. By what invisible power has
this surprising metamorphosis been performed? By that of the laws
and that of their industry. The laws, the indulgent laws, protect
them as they arrive, stamping on them the symbol of adoption; they
receive ample rewards for their labours; these accumulated rewards
procure them lands; those lands confer on them the title of freemen,
and to that title every benefit is affixed which men can possibly
require. This is the great operation daily performed by our laws.
From whence proceed these laws? From our government. Whence the
government? It is derived from the original genius and strong desire
of the people ratified and confirmed by the crown. This is the great
chain which links us all, this is the picture which every province
exhibits, Nova Scotia excepted.

There the crown has done all; either there were no people who had
genius, or it was not much attended to: the consequence is, that the
province is very thinly inhabited indeed; the power of the crown in
conjunction with the musketos has prevented men from settling there.
Yet some parts of it flourished once, and it contained a mild
harmless set of people. But for the fault of a few leaders, the
whole were banished. The greatest political error the crown ever
committed in America, was to cut off men from a country which wanted