Human settlement

“ No settlement was established until it was supported by capital and maintained through a period of struggles and first conquest over nature, by reinforcements from a secured and established civilization in the Old World.
There is no boon in nature. All the blessings we enjoy are the fruits of labor, toil, self-denial, and study. ”

“ Whenever I hear of any new settlement, I pay it a visit once or twice a year, on purpose to observe the different steps each settler takes, the gradual improvements, the different tempers of each family, on which their prosperity in a great nature depends; their different modifications of industry, their ingenuity, and contrivance; for being all poor, their life requires sagacity and prudence. ”

“ But, however admirably gifted by nature any situation may be deemed for the purpose of forming a new settlement, many weighty considerations must press upon the mind, and much privation will be endured, before any individual will determine to quit his native land, in search of ease or affluence in a distant uninhabited world. ”

“ For few persons will leave their families, connections, friends, and native land, to seek a settlement in untried foreign climes, without some strong subsisting causes of uneasiness where they are, or the hope of some great advantages in the place to which they are going. ”

“ This, together with the number of convicts, who after the expiration of their sentences remain with their respective families growing up under them, has so increased the population of free settlers, that the prosperity of the settlement, as a colony, has proportionally advanced ”

“ Among these early settlers were the foremost men of all the states, the Revolutionary stock that won independence, who carried their love of liberty and the principles and instincts of their localities to a soil more fertile than any of the old states, and with natural resources, climate and facilities for settlement and civilization as favorable as any within their reach. ”

“ Now, mark, in the estimation of civilization it requires a settlement, territory and subjects for this territory; and then it requires certain ingredients within this community, to constitute civilization. ”

“ Not once, but again and again we have laid our whole thought and purpose before the world, not in general terms only, but each time with sufficient definition to make it clear what sort of definite terms of settlement must necessarily spring out of them. ”

“ But by scattering to different points and struggling bravely against great difficulties, they managed to exist and some of them in time made permanent homes for themselves, while others feeling they could not content themselves in what had impressed them as an inhospitable country, left the settlement as opportunity offered and came nearer civilization. ”

“ And Squirrels, formerly.
Until a Pioneer, as
Settlers often do
Liking the quiet of the Place
Attracted more unto —
And from a Settlement
A Capital has grown
Distinguished for the gravity
Of every Citizen. ”

“ But above all this, the state and circumstances of our settlements render such a measure not only proper and eligible, but absolutely necessary. The English settlements, as they are at present circumstanced, are absolutely at a stand; they are settled up to the mountains: and in the mountains there is no where together land sufficient for a settlement large enough to subsist by itself, and to defend itself, and preserve a communication with the present settlements. ”

“ Now there is no branch of political life on which25 these distinctions tell with greater force than on the work of planting new homes of any people beyond the sea. The colonies, the settlements, the plantations, of that elder world whose range of settlement was the Mediterranean were settlements of citizens who set forth from cities. ”

“ Instead of this senseless parading about overgrown cities, might you not ascertain by practical experiment, whether a mode of settlement that has in other countries successfully identified millions with the soil might not be adopted? The occupation of our lands has been so far of a temporary nature. ”

“ To a first settler, the uncertainty of the how, the when, the where, the everything, connected with his prospects, is distracting; but to those coming out to join their friends, what is there but pleasure? ”

“ Subsistence is the first desire; and, in new countries where forests are to be felled, dwellings erected, public institutions established, roads and bridges built, settlers cannot be expected, in the cultivation of the land, to look much beyond the present moment. And they are entitled to the original fertility of the soil. Europe passed through the process of settlement and exhaustion many centuries ago. ”

“ Hither, allow me to ask, have not all the peoples of the nations of the earth come for an asylum and for refuge? All the nations of the earth, and all the varieties of the races of the nations of the earth, have gathered here. In the early settlements of the country, the Irish, the French, the Swede, the Turk, the Italian, the Moor, and so I might enumerate all the races, and all the variety of races, came here; and it is a fundamental mistake to suppose that settlement was begun here in the interests of any class, or condition, or race, or interest. ”

“ In the many instances in which we find old settlements named as the tunor ham of a man, the settlement was not only the tun or ham of a man, but also of his family and of some, at least, of his near kindred who assisted him in the cultivation of the land. ”

“ It is a work of time, expense, and difficulty to explore the windings of a coast; more an object for Government to accomplish, than for an individual to undertake. You conjecture that this is a desirable part of the continent to select for a settlement, but it may be long before this place shall be located, and a solitary settler would labour under many disadvantages in his isolation. ”

“ A large body of immigrants, or a number of families from the same locality, generally form a separate settlement—especially if they are of different race from the original settlers; and if they settle in the capital, they usually have a separate quarter allotted to them. ”

“ In reclaiming and reoccupying lands laid waste by human improvidence or malice, and abandoned by man, or occupied only by a nomade or thinly scattered population, the task of the pioneer settler is of a very different character. ”

“ They prevent any from forming a fixed settlement who are inclined to attempt it; for although the fruitfulness of the soil would abundantly repay the labour of settlers, and render migration wholly unnecessary, even if the population were increased more than tenfold ”

“ In this way settlement and emigration are discouraged, inasmuch as the people, both of the colony and of the mother-country, are deprived of all confidence in the permanency of any system, and any familiar acquaintance with any of the ¡temporary methods. It would be easy to cite many other examples of the influence of government in this matter. ”

“ How shall we reveal to this immigrant what this great varied American life means and thus assimilate him into the body politic? Seeking an answer to this problem, the settlement houses have found one of their most effective means in the drama. The southern or southeastern European, filled with emotion, loves to act. In the settlement house, through carefully selected plays, he learns our language and gains the ideals of the land in which he is to live. ”

“ The memory of the sufferers in this war as well as that of their descendants still looks back upon them with regret, and abhorrence, and the page of history will consign their names to posterity, with the full weight of infamy they deserve. . . .
. . . our early land laws . . . allowed four hundred acres, and no more, to a settlement right. Many of our first settlers seemed to regard this amount of the surface of the earth, as the allotment of divine providence for one family, and believed that any attempt to get more would be sinful. ”

“ The position of a settlement, which attempts at one and the same time to declare its belief in this eventual, industrial democracy, and to labor toward that end, to maintain a standard of living, and to deal humanely and simply with those in actual want, often seems utterly untenable and preposterous. ”

“ From this it has followed, as settlement has gradually spread over the continent, bringing innumerable communities into existence, that these have tended to group themselves into sections, united by common modes of thought, ways of life, and economic needs. ”

“ They thought that when they got to the fertile country they would find a settlement, and then they might be able to do something for the rest of the party, and it would be much wiser to go ahead than to turn back. ”

“ We propose to secure a tract of land in one of these countries, prepare it for settlement, establish in it authority, govern it by equitable laws, assist it in times of necessity, settling it gradually with a prepared people, and so create a home for these destitute multitudes. ”

“ The settlers will find themselves related to two distinct classes of “the poor,” and it will be well if they keep in mind the fact that they must serve both those who, like the artisans, need the necessaries for life, and also those who, like casual labourers, need the necessaries for livelihood. They will not of course come believing that their Settlement will make the wicked good, the dull glad, and the poor rich, but they may be assured that results will follow the sympathy born of close neighbourhood. ”

“ You take the men in your own settlement—for there are men in most of your settlements who have spent considerable time upon missions—and you will find, upon examining the results of their labors, that they have been more prospered, when at home, than men who have not gone upon missions, so that their absence from home has not been a loss to them. ”

“ I doubt not that, if the emigrant had remained at home, it would have taken a thousand years to attain the same general development now reached by the free States of North America* The settlers carried with them the best ideas and the best institutions of their native land— the arts and sciences of England, the forms of a representative government, the trial by jury, the common law, the ideas of Christianity, and the traditions of the human race. In the woods, far from help, they were forced to become self-reliant and thrifty men. ”

“ Unfortunately, this young Dominion, whose history as a European settlement is comprised within the lifetime of its oldest inhabitants, is already reproducing some of the saddest problems of civilization which perplex the people of the Old World. We started with every advantage in the shape of a favourable climate and rich natural resources. The original settlers were, for the most part, men and women of sturdy determination, enterprising spirit, and strong physique. ”

“ In planting new settlements they were aided by our own people,—the very elements out of which we endeavor to frame colonies, and with which we do produce sickly, miserable communities that can only be said to exist, and to linger on in a sort of half-life, without the spirit of a young, or the amenities and polish of an old community, and, above all, without any spirit of independence. ”

“ As we study the old documents we find a sullen tenantry, an obsequious and careworn agent, a dissatisfied patroon, an impatient company, a bewildered government—and all this in a new and promising country where the natives were friendly, the transportation easy, the land fertile, the conditions favorable to that conservation of human happiness which is and should be the aim of civilization. ”

“ The settlement has its critics and its devoted supporters; it is one of the voluntary experiments that shows the spirit of its promoters and that helps along social progress, and it must be estimated among the assets of a community. Here and there in the country among certain groups, as lumbermen, miners, or construction workers, or even in a settled town, many of the methods of the settlement are likely to find acceptance, and the settlement idea of neighborliness is fundamental to all happy and successful social life. ”

“ The rapid settlement of the country, the improvement in civilization, which has come through the multiplication of large villages and of cities, the general facilities for obtaining education, such as exist in no other country, have{248} made ours the land above all others in which generations may rise rapidly from the social position of their ancestors. ”

“ This is the case with every person in every land; but it is pre-eminently the case with the early settlers of a colony. They labour, and others will enter into their labours; they sow, and others will come and reap. The first settlers in any land lay the foundation of the social edifice, and the building of after ages much accords with the foundation. Your principles and conduct will produce a more powerful impression in a thinly peopled territory than in the dense population of home. ”

“ The settlement of colonies in uninhabited countries, the establishment of those in security, whose misfortunes have made their own country no longer pleasing or safe, the acquisition of property without injury to any, the appropriation of the waste and luxuriant bounties of nature, and the enjoyment of those gifts which heaven has scattered upon regions uncultivated and unoccupied, cannot be considered without giving rise to a great number of pleasing ideas, and bewildering the imagination in delightful prospects ”

“ With the advance of settlement these men and their descendants, frontier life having become a passion with them, pushed on to new frontiers. Though such a life produced a race of men with some prominent virtues, among them great courage and self-reliance, yet it tended to a mode of living not much above barbarism. ”