A Character of the Province of Maryland: Described in four distinct parts; also a small Treatise on the Wild and Naked Indians (or Susquehanokes) of Maryland, their customs, manners, absurdities, and religion; together with a collection of historical letters.Alsop, George
History
A Character of the Province of Maryland: Described in four distinct parts; also a small Treatise on the Wild and Naked Indians (or Susquehanokes) of Maryland, their customs, manners, absurdities, and religion; together with a collection of historical letters.
Alsop, George
Maryland -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800; Susquehanna Indians
Then methinks this may stop the mouths of those that will undiscreetly
compassionate them that dwell under necessary Servitudes; for let but
Parents of an indifferent capacity in Estates, when their Childrens age
by computation speak them seventeen or eighteen years old, turn them
loose to the wide world, without a seven years working Apprenticeship
(being just brought up to the bare formality of a little reading
and writing) and you shall immediately see how weak and shiftless
they’le be towards the maintaining and supporting of themselves; and
(without either stealing or begging) their bodies like a Sentinel must
continually wait to see when their Souls will be frighted away by the
pale Ghost of a starving want.
Then let such, where Providence hath ordained to live as Servants,
either in _England_ or beyond Sea, endure the prefixed yoak of their
limited time with patience, and then in a small computation of years,
by an industrious endeavour, they may become Masters and Mistresses
of Families themselves. And let this be spoke to the deserved praise
of _Mary-Land_, That the four years I served there were not to me so
slavish, as a two years Servitude of a Handicraft Apprenticeship was
here in _London_; _Volenti enim nil difficile_: Not that I write this
to seduce or delude any, or to draw them from their native soyle, but
out of a love to my Countrymen, whom in the general I wish well to,
and that the lowest of them may live in such a capacity of Estate, as
that the bare interest of {55} their Livelihoods might not altogether
depend upon persons of the greatest extendments.
Now those whose abilities here in _England_ are capable of maintaining
themselves in any reasonable and handsom manner, they had best so to
remain, lest the roughness of the Ocean, together with the staring
visages of the wilde Animals, which they may see after their arrival
into the Country, may alter the natural dispositions of their bodies,
that the stay’d and solid part that kept its motion by Doctor _Trigs_
purgationary operation, may run beyond the byas of the wheel in a
violent and laxative confusion.
Now contrarywise, they who are low, and make bare shifts to buoy
themselves up above the shabby center of beggarly and incident
casualties, I heartily could wish the removal of some of them into
_Mary-Land_, which would make much better for them that stay’d behind,
as well as it would advantage those that went.
They whose abilities cannot extend to purchase their own transportation
into _Mary-Land_ (and surely he that cannot command so small a sum for
so great a matter, his life must needs be mighty low and dejected), I
say they may for the debarment of a four years sordid liberty, go over
into this Province and there live plentiously well. And what’s a four
years Servitude to advantage a man all the remainder of his dayes,
making his predecessors happy in his {56} sufficient abilities, which
he attained to partly by the restrainment of so small a time?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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