ore defended by mountains,
are described as excellent countries: but, upon what conditions of
advantage foreigners go thither, I am yet to seek.[89]

What evils do our people avoid by running from hence, is easier to be
determined. They conceive themselves to live under the tyranny of most
cruel exacting landlords, who have no view further than increasing their
rent-rolls. Secondly, you complain of the want of trade, whereof you
seem not to know the reason. Thirdly, you lament most justly the money
spent by absentees in England. Fourthly, you complain that your linen
manufacture declines. Fifthly, that your tithe-collectors oppress you.
Sixthly, that your children have no hopes of preferment in the church,
the revenue, or the army; to which you might have added the law, and all
civil employments whatsoever. Seventhly, you are undone for silver, and
want all other money.

I could easily add some other motives, which, to men of spirit, who
desire and expect, and think they deserve the common privileges of human
nature, would be of more force, than any you have yet named, to drive
them out of this kingdom. But, as these speculations may probably not
much affect the brains of your people, I shall choose to let them pass
unmentioned. Yet I cannot but observe, that my very good and virtuous
friend, his excellency Burnet, (_O fili, nec tali indigne parente!_)[90]
hath not hitherto been able to persuade his vassals, by his oratory in
the style of a command, to settle a revenue on his viceroyal person.[91]
I have been likewise assured, that in one of those colonies on the
continent, which nature hath so far favoured, as (by the industry of the
inhabitants) to produce a great quantity of excellent rice, the
stubbornness of the people, who having been told that the world is wide,
took it into their heads that they might sell their own rice at whatever
foreign markets they pleased, and seem, by their practice, very
unwilling to quit that opinion.

But, to return to my subject: I must confess to you both, that if one
reason of your people's deserting us be, the despair of things growing
better in their own country, I have not one syllable to answer; because
that would be to hope for what is impossible; and so I have been telling
the public these ten years. For there are three events which must
precede any such blessing: First, a liberty of trade; secondly, a share
of preferments in all kinds, to the British natives; and thirdly, a