fields side by side with
his "master." This, too, was an astounding difference to the mind of the
British labourer. Probably for him it created a clearer, if not
altogether universal and true picture of the meaning of American
democracy than would have volumes of writing upon political
institutions. Gradually there was established in the lower orders of
British society a visualization of America as a haven of physical
well-being and personal social happiness.

This British labouring class had for long, however, no medium of
expression in print. Here existed, then, an unexpressed public opinion
of America, of much latent influence, but for the moment largely
negligible as affecting other classes or the Government. A more
important emigrating class in its influence on opinion at home, though
not a large class, was composed about equally of small farmers and small
merchants facing ruin in the agricultural and trading crises that
followed the end of the European war. The British travellers' books
from 1810 to 1820 are generally written by men of this class, or by
agents sent out from co-operative groups planning emigration. Generally
they were discontented with political conditions at home, commonly
opposed to a petrified social order, and attracted to the United States
by its lure of prosperity and content. The books are, in brief, a
superior type of emigrant guide for a superior type of emigrant,
examining and emphasizing industrial opportunity.

Almost universally, however, they sound the note of superior political
institutions and conditions. One wrote "A republican finds here A
Republic, and the only Republic on the face of the earth that ever
deserved the name: where all are under the protection of equal laws; of
laws made by Themselves[11]." Another, who established an English colony
in the Western States of Illinois, wrote of England that he objected to
"being ruled and taxed by people who had no more right to rule and tax
us than consisted in the power to do it." And of his adopted country he
concludes: "I love the Government; and thus a novel sensation is
excited; it is like the development of a new faculty. I am become a
patriot in my old age[12]." Still another detailed the points of his
content, "I am here, lord and master of myself and of 100 acres of
land--an improvable farm, little trouble to me, good society and a good
market, and, I think, a fine climate, only a little too hot and dry in
summer; the pars