To these remarks there are some exceptions. The women, who live in English families, retain, at times, a degree of that fondness for dress, so remarkable, and universal, among such as still continue in a savage state. Those who are educated in these families, are often seen at church. A small number also, of both men and women, are reputed to be honest; and are, therefore, safely believed to merit this character.

But the most remarkable exception is the following: at the settlement above mentioned lives an aged Indian, who possesses a considerable share of understanding. This man, for a series of years, has occasionally preached to them; and is said to give them useful exhortations. At times, they very generally assemble to hear his discourses; and hold him in much respect: a strong proof, that human nature in its lowest degradation of ignorance, and vice, feels irresistibly the distinction between worth and the want of it, and renders, almost instinctively, its homage to virtue.

If any thing is necessary to complete the miserable and melancholy picture, it is this additional feature; that not one of the rising generation appears to aim, even remotely, at any higher character.

You have, here, an account of that very state of society, which is prefered, and extolled, by Godwin, as the perfection of man. Here the human race, as nearly as possible, are without the restraint of law, morals, or religion. At the same time they are free in the fullest sense. No private individual possesses, or exercises, any power to control their conduct; and the Government of Connecticut, either from despair of doing them any good, or from the unwillingness of its magistrates to execute law among these people, seems, in a manner which I cannot justify, to have resigned them to the dictates of their own passions and appetites. Flagrant breaches of law would undoubtedly be punished in them as in others. At least, such as respected property, life, or limb. But few or no exertions have for a long time been made to restrain their commission of inferiour crimes; and to these crimes alone do they appear at present to have any strong propensity; VOL. III.

5

i. e. as they estimate crimes; for lewdness seems not to be considered by them as criminal. Ordinarily, they do just what they please.

Promiscuous concubinage also, Godwin's great and favourite step towards perfection, they practice in the most unlimited manner. Nor are they less perfectly possessed of his other two essential ingredients in the constitution of his happy society. Why then are they not perfect and happy?

There are two great reasons to be assigned as an answer to this question, both of which have escaped this hoodwinked philosopher. The first is, that human depravity, or, in other words, sin, has no tendency to make a happy society; but, among all intelligent beings, will always render the social state unhappy, in exact proportion to the degree in which it exists. The other is, that labour is the only source of those enjoyments, which make up what Godwin calls happiness, and, that without the dominion of law, which alone secures to man the benefit of his efforts, no human being will labour. Godwin, and his associates, feel as if themselves should be happier if they were freed from the restraints which I have mentioned; not mistrusting, that without them, others, enjoying the same licentiousness of disposition, and the same impunity in indulging it, would plunder them of liberty, property, and life. Equally are they insensible, that without the protection of law none would labour, and no part of those enjoyments, on which they riot, be brought into existence. Without law, religion, and morals, they might, indeed, be fornicators, and adulterers, thieves and assassins; but they would be beggars and vagabonds. The very wickedness, which prompted Godwin to write his books, and which he has poured out upon almost every page with a portentous turpitude, would render all around him as hostile to him, as he is to religion, morals, and government; and make whatever he thought his own rights the tennis-ball of injustice and cruelty. In addition to all this, and in defiance of the sagacious calculations of one of his pretended answerers, population instead of being increased would rapidly decay. These Indians have continually declined in their numbers, notwithstanding their

decrease has been checked by their cohabitation with the blacks. Where the fruits of no man's labour are secured; where no man has acknowledged children to labour for; where, according to the wish of Godwin, every child is without a known father, and possessed of a casual instead of a family name, no man will labour. He, who is willing to be industrious, seeing all his earnings destined to become the prey of strangers and enemies, of sloth and villainy, will retire from the hopeless pursuit with disdain, and consent to starve with the multitude, rather than toil for wretches, whom it must be difficult not to hate, and impossible not to despise. What a pity it is, that Godwin, and all who relish his doctrines, should not obtain the privilege of sharing in the dignity and happiness, enjoyed in this state of human perfection.

The great calamity, experienced by these Indians, and by all other people in the like circumstances, is this: Within the horizon of their thought not a single motive arises, not a single inducement is visible, which might awaken their dozing energy, or prompt them to any useful effort. Man, without motives to exertion, is a beast or a log; with them he can become an Alfred or a Paul. But the motives must be such as he is fitted to feel; and Indians, without greater exertions in their behalf than those which have hitherto been made, will never feel, nor even comprehend, such motives as influence civilized man. The great hindrance to their improvement does not lie, as some dreaming European philosophers have supposed, in the inferiority of their minds. Their minds are natively of the same structure with those of Frenchmen, or Englishmen. This position is completely proved by the fact, that the children of Americans, Englishmen, Scotchmen, Irishmen, Dutchmen, and Frenchmen, when captivated by them in early life, become mere Indians, distinguishable in nothing, except a small difference of colour, from the native savages. Not one of them ever discovered half the capacity, or rose to half the distinction, which the history written by white men records of Miantonimoh, Philip, Sassacus, Uncas, or the great Hendrick. Nay, the Canadian descendants of the French peasantry are many of them inferiour in every res

pect to the aborigines. The philosophy of Buffon, therefore, of D'Pauw and various others concerning this subject would have been better spared: for it is unsupported even by the shadow of a reason, or a fact. The real cause of all this degradation in the Indian, is the want of such motives to exertion, as he is prepared to feel, within the view of his mind. The only cause of human distinction also, is the existence of such motives. Where nothing prompts to action, nothing will be done; where sufficient inducements are presented, every thing will be done, which is within the grasp of human power. When motives cease to operate and excite, man will lounge away life; saunter from place to place without knowing why; dress himself in a blanket; seat himself upon a stone; smoke through the day at the door of a weekwam; or stretch himself to sleep under the nearest hedge. When motives arouse him to exertion, he will cross unknown oceans to discover new countries; coast the polar ice to attack the whale; ascend the Andes to measure the equatorial latitude; ransack the bowels of the earth to enlarge the science of mineralogy; imprison himself in a cell for seven years to obtain the palm of eloquence; face the fangs of the catamount, or the tiger, to be called the best huntsman; toil through life to accumulate an inheritance for his children; or fight battles, or slaughter millions, to wreath upon his brow the garland of triumph. With sufficient motives also, he will resist temptation; subdue his lusts; expend his substance; and yield his life for the cause of christianity, the salvation of men, and the glory of the Redeemer.

The Indian, when passing from savage ferocity into quiet life, undergoes this transmigration with the most unfavourable circumstances. All the considerations, by which he was formerly influenced, are cut off; and no new ones are introduced to his view. War and hunting, wisdom in council and eloquence in debate, the only objects of his former ambition, and the sources of all his former glory, vanish at once. To them nothing succeeds which presents him a single allurement. He hates labour, and is therefore poor. But among civilized people, poverty is, in the common opinion, only another name for disgrace. For reflection and

study he is utterly unqualified; from the want not of capacity, but of inclination. Labour and thought, therefore, being both odious, and in his view contemptible, he is at the outset precluded from attempting either. But with these, all motives, which prompt to any exertion in civilized life, are inseparably connected. Hence his mind is left to the government of instinct, and the remaining influence of his former habits. In this manner he sinks down to the state of a mere animal; and in his mode of life resembles a brute more than a man. Ardent spirits in this case vary the dull course of his feelings with a pleasure, derived from nothing else, and therefore peculiarly agreeable. The pool, sluggish and dead, is for a moment brushed by an agitating breeze; but, when it is past, the broken scum unites, and resumes its former appearance of loathsome and noxious stagnation.

Savages can be successfully changed into civilized men only in two modes. Christianity, by establishing a sense of duty to God," always conveys with it motives, capable of prompting the soul to any thing which it commands; such as the attainment of mental peace, the approbation of God, the esteem of good men, safety from perdition, and a title to eternal life. Even Indians under its influence have in many instances exhibited fair specimens of virtuous and commendable conduct. In spite of all their habits; they have employed themselves in useful business; and, in spite of their ignorance and errors, have acquired the esteem of christians. If Indians are to be civilized without the immediate influence of christianity, the work must be accomplished in such a manner, that they must not cease to feel the motives, which produced their former conduct, until they have begun to feel new ones; that they shall be engaged by new objects of allurement before they have bidden a final adieu to the old; and that they shall not lose the sense, and hope, of reputation, while passing through the metamorphosis, by which they are changed from savages into citizens. An Indian, hopelessly sunk below the possession, and the attainment, of character, can never without an exertion of Omnipotence, cease to be an Indian; i. e. a sloth, a sot, and a vagabond.