I have hitherto myself depended entirely on
foreign manufactures: but I have now thirty-five spindles a going, a
hand carding-machine, and looms with the flying shuttle, for the supply
of my own farms, which will never be relinquished in my time. The
continuance of the war will fix the habit generally, and out of the
evils of impressment and of the orders of council, a great blessing
for us will grow. I have not formerly been an advocate for great
manufactories. I doubted whether our labor, employed in agriculture,
and aided by the spontaneous energies of the earth, would not procure
us more than we could make ourselves of other necessaries. But other
considerations entering into the question, have settled my doubts.
The candor with which you have viewed the manners and condition of our
citizens, is so unlike the narrow prejudices of the French and English
travellers preceding you, who, considering each the manners and habits
of their own people as the only orthodox, have viewed every thing
differing from that test as boorish and barbarous, that your work will
be read here extensively, and operate great good.
Amidst this mass of approbation which is given to every other part of
the work, there is a single sentiment which I cannot help wishing to
bring to what I think the correct one; and, on a point so interesting,
I value your opinion too highly not to ambition its concurrence with
my own.
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