The Virginia Gazette

Tros, Tyriuque mihi nullo discrimine agetur.
Virginianus et extraneus eadem jura habent.

THE strength of a people rising and falling with the increase and decrease of inhabitants, it is good policy in all states, by every prudent regulation, to encourage the importation of strangers. To this end, all invidious distinctions, between natives and foreigners, should be for ever banished. In like manner care should be taken that none suffer the smallest inconvenience on account of their religious tenets, which in all men differ as much as their faces.

As long as a people are so infatuated as to suppose that a man's merit is less merely because his father begat him on the other side of the Atlantick, no wonder that such a people increase but slow. For the same reason it might be supposed that a place where men of all religious persuasions have not equal advantages should be shunned by all whose opinions did not tally with the public standard.

The rapid population of the late planted colony of Pennsylvania is a proof of the above assertion, the inhabitants of which, by shunning a supercilious contempt of foreigners, and its founder the worthy Mr. Penn, impartially giving equal privileges to men of all parties, have induced such numbers of settlers that they nearly equal the inhabitants of this ancient colony, which has been planted very near double the time. I am bold to assert that for one foreigner that settles here Pennsylvania receives a hundred.

The love of our country, when rightly understood, is a most important virtue; but I greatly fear that, with partial bigots, it degenerates into the meanest of vices. The whole human race is the proper object of a true philanthropy, and when we confine it within narrow limits what is love to one becomes cruelty to another. The old Romans boasted much of their amor patriae, and from this mistaken principle they destroyed Carthage, Numantia, and depopulated fine countries to aggrandize their own. I would beg leave to recommend this to the consideration of those narrow souled people who, under the pretence of encouraging native merit, cruelly and partially discountenance all foreigners. If such a selfish attachment to one part of the community be genuine benevolence, I see no reason why pirates and robbers should not be canonized for martyrs; who, though they proclaim war with all the world besides, are so inviolably attached to one another that they will sooner submit to the halter than involve their accomplices.

When the Romans sacked the city of Corinth, the various melted metals running down the streets by accident concreted into one substance, which far surpassing any of its component materials came into common use, and acquired the name of Corinthian brass. Thus may we, who are a collection from almost all the various kingdoms of Europe, forgetting our former connections, and banishing all illiberal distinctions, glory in the name of Americans. Let us not inquire whether any man is a native or foreigner, of this or that party, but let it be sufficient that he wears the human form. If this be our character, we will increase so fast, by natural generation and the accession of foreigners, that in a little time Great Britain may the combin'd world defy

And in the strength of brave Virginia joy.

A CITIZEN OF THE WORLD