on the credulous weakness of our minds. Europe, and not England,
is the parent country of America. This new world hath been the asylum
for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from EVERY PART
of Europe. Hither have they fled, not from the tender embraces of the mother, but
from the cruelty of the monster; and it is so far true of England,
that the same tyranny which drove the first emigrants from home,
pursues their descendants still.

In this extensive quarter of the globe, we forget the narrow limits
of three hundred and sixty miles (the extent of England)
and carry our friendship on a larger scale; we claim brotherhood
with every European Christian, and triumph in the generosity of the sentiment.

It is pleasant to observe by what regular gradations
we surmount the force of local prejudice, as we enlarge
our acquaintance with the world. A man born in any town
in England divided into parishes, will naturally associate most
with his fellow-parishioners (because their interests in many
cases will be common) and distinguish him by the name of NEIGHBOUR;
if he meet him but a few miles from home, he drops the narrow idea
of a street, and salutes him by the name of TOWNSMAN; if he travel out
of the county, and meet him in any other, he forgets the minor divisions
of street and town, and calls him COUNTRYMAN, i. e. COUNTRYMAN;
but if in their foreign excursions they should associate in France
or any other part of EUROPE, their local remembrance would be enlarged
into that of ENGLISHMEN. And by a just parity of reasoning,
all Europeans meeting in America, or any other quarter of the globe,
are COUNTRYMEN; for England, Holland, Germany, or Sweden, when compared
with the whole, stand in the same places on the larger scale,
which the divisions of street, town, and county do on the smaller ones;