American Traditions Concerning Property and Liberty

When, over a century and a half ago, a poet saw a group of his countrymen about to set sail on their way to a new home in Georgia, he took a gloomy view of their prospects. He believed that they were leaving a land of scattered hamlets, sheltered cots, and cultivated farms, where ease, health, and plenty had prevailed, for a “dreary scene†around the “wild Altama†—a region of blazing suns, wild tornadoes, poisonous fields, and matted woods where lurked the “dark scorpion … vengeful snake … crouching tigers … and savage men more murderous still than they.†Posterity has liked best the poet's fond memories of his native village. Goldsmith, however, considered the practical politico-economic aspect of his poem to be its best feature. He had indeed paid some attention to actual economic changes that were causing a depopulation of the English countryside. His compatriots, he believed, were crossing “half the convex world,†not because they were dissatisfied with a land where simple pleasures and “light labour … gave what life required but gave no more,†but because such a manner of living was no longer possible in Britain: “trade's unfeeling train†had “usurped the land†and made it a place where the “man of wealth†extorted pleasures “from his fellow-creature's woe†and took up “a space that many poor supplied.â€