Volume 18 , Issue 28

1785, America & Emigrants

We searched back through the old newspaper archives to find this interesting read concerning "America" and Emigrants. The Pennsylvania Packet, out of Philadelphia, PA, dated 5 November 1785, Saturday, page 2, the following political reflections on America were copied from a new and interesting publication back in 1785 or before, called the "Political Herald," under the head of "The Present Times."

Found on Newspapers.com

America
The features of the present age (1785) are most clearly discerned, and seen too to the best advantage, in America. Emigrants from the old world, flying from oppression, carried along with them to the vast American continent, industry, severe economy, just ideas of civil liberty, and minds emancipated from the tyranny of custom, and open to the most enlarged views of the most liberal policy and jurisprudence.

The virtuous spirit was extricated from a mass of fermenting matter, and wasted over the Atlantic, formed new bodies. The finest and most expressive features of the parent, who had begun to know the infirmities of old age, are revived in the child. The American, flourishing in the vigor of youth, and possessing all the activity of that period, is not confined, like restive age, to one spot, but ranges freely over different nations, ever ready to adopt whatever he may find conducive to his own interest, or that of the republic. He is afloat on the great ocean of the world, and, being in motion, is more easily turned into new paths of adventure than if he were at rest. The examples of ancient, of latter, and of present times, are before the legislators of America; and, form the whole, they formed a system of government, in which, if the power of coercion were as strong an ingredient as the spirit of liberty, it might be pronounced to be the best, as it is the latest, that has appeared in the world. Whether the authority of Congress will ever be fully established over the Thirteen Provinces or not, is a question that time alone can resolve; as there is nothing in history, or modern example, that so nearly resembles the political situation North America, as to be certain ground of prediction on this subject, The amphictyonic council, which, while Greece preserved its independence, united the different states in one confederacy against a common enemy, did not however, preserve internal concord; and even the influence and authority of the Amphictyons, in cafes of foreign war, depended on circumstances which either have no place, or are not in such full force in North America. The great body of the Greeks were a most superstitious people, and the Amphictyons had the command of the Oracle at Delphi's. In the pure times of the Grecian republics, the whole world, besides themselves, were in a state of barbarism; a sameness of language and of religion, and an affinity of taste, manners and customs, therefore, formed among the Greeks, and even among the Greeks and their colonies in Asia, Italy, and the islands in the adjacent seas, a strong and intimate band of union. In all others, where it is to be found, the different sects are animated against each other with the common fury of religious zeal.

There is therefore no engine of priesthood to move and direct the untied force of the states to one common object; neither is there any common enemy of different language, religion and manners, who will ever attempt to subdue the American states. The authority of Congress will neither be confirmed by the arts of an oracle, nor the terror of a Xerxes.
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