far preferable to that of being only a pretty gentlewoman, I concluded to send you a spinning-wheel, which I hope you will accept as a small token of my sincere love and affection.

Sister, farewell, and remember that modesty, as it makes the most homely virgin amiable and charming, so the want of it infallibly renders the most perfect beauty disagreeable and odious. But when that brightest of female virtues shines among other perfections of body and mind in the same person, it makes the woman more lovely than an angel. Excuse this freedom, and use the same with me. I am, dear Jenny, your loving brother. B. FRANKLIN.

DEAREST SISTER JENNY: I took your admonition very kindly, and was far from being offended at you for it. If I say anything about it to you, 'tis only to rectify some wrong opinions you seem to have entertained of me; and this I do only because they give you some uneasiness, which I am unwilling to be the occasion of. You express yourself as if you thought I was against worshipping of God, and doubt that good works would merit heaven; which are both fancies of your own, I think, without foundation. I am so far from thinking that God is not to be worshipped, that I have composed and wrote a whole book. of devotions for my own use; and I imagine there are few if any in the world so weak as to imagine that the little good we can do here can merit so vast a reward hereafter.

There are some things in your New England doctrine and worship which I do not agree with; but I do not therefore condemn them, or desire to shake your belief or practice of them. We may dislike things that are nevertheless right in themselves; I would only have you make me the same allowance, and have a better opinion both of morality and your brother. Read the pages of Mr. Edwards's late book, entitled, "Some Thoughts concerning the present Revival of Religion in New England," from 367 to 375, and, when you judge of others, if you can perceive the fruit to be good, don't terrify yourself that the tree may be evil; but be assured it is not so, for you know who has said, "Men do not gather grapes off thorns, and figs off thistles."

I have not time to add, but that I shall always be your tionate brother,

affec

B. FRANKLIN.

P. S. It was not kind in you, when your sister commended good works, to suppose she intended it a reproach to you. 'Twas very far from her thoughts.

[TO JAMES READ.]

On Differences between Man and Wife.

Saturday morning, 17 August, 1745.

DEAR JEMMY: I have been reading your letter over again, and, since you desire an answer, I sit down to write you one; yet, as I write in the market, it will, I believe, be but a short one, though I may be long about it. I approve of your method of writing one's mind, when one is too warm to speak it with temper : but, being quite cool myself in this affair, I might as well speak as write, if I had an opportunity.

Are you an attorney by profession, and do you know no better how to choose a proper court in which to bring your action? Would you submit to the decision of a husband a cause between you and his wife? Don't you know that all wives are in the right? It may be you don't, for you are yet but a young husband. But see, on this head, the learned Coke, that oracle of the law, in his chapter De Jur. Marit. Angl. I advise you not to bring it to trial; for, if you do, you will certainly be cast.

Frequent interruptions make it impossible for me to go through all your letter. I have only time to remind you of the saying of that excellent old philosopher, Socrates, that, in differences among friends, they that make the first concessions are the wisest ; and to hint to you that you are in danger of losing that honor in the present case, if you are not very speedy in your acknowledgments, which I persuade myself you will be, when you consider the sex of your adversary.

Your visits never had but one thing disagreeable in them; that is, they were always too short. I shall exceedingly regret the loss of them, unless you continue, as you have begun, to make it up to me by long letters.

I am, dear Jemmy, with sincere love to our dearest Suky, your very affectionate friend and cousin, B. FRANKLIN,

[TO PETER COLLINSON.]

Anec

English Poor Laws Amending the Scheme of Providence dotes-Aversion from Labor among American Indians — Germans in Pennsylvania - Their Peculiarities Hopes for England.

PHILADELPHIA, 9 May, 1753.

SIR: I thank you for the kind and judicious remarks you have made on my little piece. I have often observed with wonder the temper of the poorer English laborers which you mention, and acknowledge it to be pretty general. When any of them happen to come here, where labor is much better paid than in England, their industry seems to diminish in equal proportion. But it is not so with the German laborers. They retain the habitual industry and frugality they bring with them, and, receiving higher wages, an accumulation arises that makes them all rich. When I consider that the English are the offspring of Germans, that the climate they live in is much of the same temperature, and when I see nothing in nature that should create this difference, I am tempted to suspect it must arise from the constitution; and I have sometimes doubted whether the laws peculiar to England, which compel the rich to maintain the poor, have not given the latter a dependence that very much lessens the care of providing against the wants of old age.

I have heard it remarked that the poor in Protestant countries, on the continent of Europe, are generally more industrious than those of Popish countries. May not the more numerous foundations in the latter for relief of the poor have some effect towards rendering them less provident? To relieve the misfortunes of our fellow-creatures is concurring with the Deity; it is godlike; but, if we provide encouragement for laziness, and support for folly, may we not be found fighting against the order of God and nature, which perhaps has appointed want and misery as the proper punishments for and cautions against, as well as necessary consequences of idleness and extravagance? Whenever we attempt to amend the scheme of Providence, and to interfere with the government of the world, we had need be very circumspect, lest we do more harm than good. In New England they once thought blackbirds useless, and mischievous to the corn. They made efforts to destroy them. The consequence was, the blackbirds were diminished; but a kind of worm which devoured their grass, and which the blackbirds used to feed on, increased prodigiously; then, finding their loss in grass much greater than their saving in corn, they wished again for their blackbirds.

We had here some years since a Transylvanian Tartar, who

had travelled much in the East, and came hither merely to see the West, intending to go home through the Spanish West Indies, China, &c. He asked me, one day, what I thought might be the reason that so many and such numerous nations as the Tartars in Europe and Asia, the Indians in America, and the Negroes in Africa, continued a wandering, careless life, and refused to live in cities, and cultivate the arts they saw practised by the civilized parts of mankind. While I was considering what answer to make him, he said, in his broken English, "God make man for Paradise. He make him for live lazy. Man make God angry. God turn him out of Paradise, and bid workee. Man no love workee; he want to go to Paradise again; he want to live lazy. So all mankind love lazy." However this may be, it seems certain that the hope of becoming at some time of life free from the necessity of care and labor, together with fear and penury, are the main springs of most people's industry. To those, indeed, who have been educated in elegant plenty, even the provision made for the poor may appear misery; but to those who have scarce ever been better provided for, such provision may seem quite good and sufficient. These latter, then, have nothing to fear worse than their present condition, and scarce hope for anything better than a parish maintenance. So that there is only the difficulty of getting that maintenance allowed while they are able to work, or a little shame they suppose attending it, that can induce them to work at all; and what they do will only be from hand to mouth.

The proneness of human nature to a life of ease, of freedom from care and labor, appears strongly in the little success that has hitherto attended every attempt to civilize our American Indians. In their present way of living, almost all their wants are supplied by the spontaneous productions of nature, with the addition of very little labor, if hunting and fishing may indeed be called labor, where game is so plenty. They visit us frequently, and see the advantages that arts, sciences, and compact societies, procure us. They are not deficient in natural understanding; and yet they have never shown any inclination to change their manner of life for ours, or to learn any of our arts. When an Indian child has been brought up among us, taught our language, and habituated to our customs, yet, if he goes to see his relatives, and makes one Indian ramble with them, there is no persuading him ever to return. And that this is not natural to them merely as Indians, but as men, is plain from this, that when white persons, of either sex, have been taken prisoners by the Indians, and lived a while with them, though ransomed by their friends, and

treated with all imaginable tenderness, to prevail with them to stay among the English, yet in a short time they become disgusted with our manner of life, and the care and pains that are necessary to support it, and take the first opportunity of escaping again into the woods, from whence there is no redeeming them. One instance I remember to have heard, where the person was brought home to possess a good estate; but, finding some care necessary to keep it together, he relinquished it to a younger brother, reserving to himself nothing but a gun and a match-coat, with which he took his way again into the wilderness.

So that I am apt to imagine that close societies, subsisting by labor and art, arose first not from choice, but from necessity, when numbers, being driven by war from their hunting-grounds, and prevented by seas, or by other nations, from obtaining other hunting-grounds, were crowded together into some narrow territories, which without labor could not afford them food. However, as matters now stand with us, care and industry seem absolutely necessary to our well-being. They should therefore have every encouragement we can invent, and not one motive to diligence be subtracted; and the support of the poor should not be by maintaining them in idleness, but by employing them in some kind of labor suited to their abilities of body, as I am informed begins to be of late the practice in many parts of England, where work houses are erected for that purpose. If these were

general, I should think the poor would be more careful, and work voluntarily to lay up something for themselves against a rainy day, rather than run the risk of being obliged to work at the pleasure of others for a bare subsistence, and that too under confinement.

The little value Indians set on what we prize so highly, under the name of learning, appears from a pleasant passage that happened some years since at a treaty between some colonies and the Six Nations. When everything had been settled to the satisfaction of both sides, and nothing remained but a mutual exchange of civilities, the English commissioners told the Indians that they had in their country a college for the instruction of youth, who were there taught various languages, arts and sciences; that there was a particular foundation in favor of the Indians, to defray the expense of the education of any of their sons who should desire to take the benefit of it; and said, if the Indians would accept the offer, the English would take half a dozen of their brightest lads, and bring them up in the best manner. The Indians, after consulting on the proposals, replied that it was re