law, that idol, behind which the despot skulks, and which imposes upon the people, decorated in the robes of sanctity, when it appears in public; but in private is a corrupted body of infamy and wickedness.

The morality of this nation is formed of actions totally indifferent to happiness, such as domestic, civil and religious ceremonies; and the mind and attention is so immersed in these forms, that the substance of virtue is totally unknown, and the moral discourses preached by the magistrates to the people, are mere instructions to defend the poor from the rich, by means of crafty patience, recommended to the former, implying thereby, that the powers of policy and justice are but illusive protection.

The external operations of the mind in this country remove from the circle of happiness in a tangent, being projected by the difficulty of subsistence, the observance of forms, and the obscurity of language; and it must be removed from the pressure of these physical evils, before it can lose that projective force, and return upon its centre, to produce that internal operation which can alone procure to man that wisdom, which by teaching him what he is, shows him what he may be, and directs him in the knowledge and well-being of his existence.

The moral situation of this country is owing to the obscurity and difficulty of its language; it will be a long time before it can communicate morally with the rest of the world; and as it was the first to be civilized, it will be the last enlightened.

TARTARY.

In this country I have never travelled; but having been among the Turcomans, a nation of Tartars inhabiting the uncultivated parts of Turkey, I conceive the analogy of their morals to be close, as their origin is the same, and this opinion has been corroborated by frequent conversations I have had with the Tartars themselves.

They are all pastors, associated in different tribes under an hereditary chief, and wandering about the country in pursuit of pasture. Their cattle supply them with abundant food, and they also exchange them for the only luxury they know-dress. They possess a great degree of animal happiness; but are far removed from that state where the mind expands to participate of intellectual happiness or consciousness, the sublimity of reason, which elevates man as much above his species, as that species elevates him above the brutes.

Their minds might however easily be brought to this state of enlightened Nature; as their superstition is fixed on a feeble basis, it might easily be overturned, and the whole fabric of their errors, which consists in magic and worshipping idols, might be destroyed by the lightest breath of reason; and these people, whose hearts are uncorrupted with the infinite factitious wants of civilized nations, would make no forcible opposition to a happy reformation in the religion of Nature.

AFRICA.

To describe the moral state of Nature in this country, this one observation may be sufficient: All the natives near the sea, form nations of pirates; and all the inland inhabitants, nations of robbers, not only of property, but the more outrageous violence of persons.

What a heart breaking reflection this causes in a child of Nature! to see almost a fourth part of human nature, which this country contains, doomed to such a state of misery, that if the rest of the globe had arrived at that enlightened state of sympathy and wisdom, of which man is capable, the contemplation of this portion would destroy all happiness. One half suffering, and the other half sympathising with equal pain.

Civilized nations, for want of being enlightened, are as much engaged in the universal rebellion against Nature, as the wretched Africans, whose destruction, instead of being checked, is augmented and encouraged by the avarice of these civilized rebels, whose political enterprizes having passed the Rubicon of Nature, the impending ruin of interest makes them dread to return.— The rebel hosts of civilization press forward, boldly trampling upon sympathy and probity, ultimately assault and subdue the metropolis of Nature; and there subverting her throne of happiness, will reduce humanity to such a state of misery, that knowledge and sensibility, acquired by civilization, will become a curse, and there will be no relief to their sufferings, till the mind sinks into the animal repose of savage ignorance.

There has lately been established in England an association to discover the interior parts of Africa, to augment the arts and sciences. This I hope will prepare the means of communication, that when Europe shall be enlightened, and discover human nature to be the only

science worthy men of wisdom, they will send forth their missions to quiet these ignorant and malignant children of Africa, who, in common with civilized nations in the universal delirium of passion, tear one another to pieces in the act of sucking the abundant and nourishing breast of their common and indulgent mother Nature, and by their impious fratricidious struggles, tear the nipple, and sacrilegiously spill the universal nourishment. O Nature! come forth in thy simple and unmysterious revelation, and display thy divinity, which requires no aid of learning, no unusual strength of mental power to recognize. Thy appearance alone would subdue all mankind, by means of thy benevolent caresses of sympathy and probity, which are thy only attributes, and subjection to thy empire would be a state of absolute liberty and happiness.

AMERICA.

To describe the moral state of Nature in this country, we must divide its inhabitants into three classes-colonists, slaves and natives.

The colonists mark their different origin by a moral similitude in policy and customs to the European states from which they emigrated, and agree with the metropolitan character in all its more prominent features. These various moral species, however, constitute the general genus of American Colonists, by their distinctive traitinterestedness or selfishness.

This quality is inseparable from minds agitated with the hopes and fears arising from the occupations of commerce. Every colonist is struggling to improve his possessions, and none, or very few, are enjoying the life of content of the land-holders in Europe, which begets disinterestedness, or at least checks the spirit of selfishness, and forms that mass of virtue which enables England in particular to resist the dire effects of luxury, corruption and conquest, and preserves a happy administration of a happy form of government in such a tempest of moral and political evils, as would overwhelm any other nation upon the face of the globe.

The slaves are that unfortunate class of inhabitants, who, robbed of the rights of men by their masters, the European colonists, must ever remain enemies to the states, and their minds being retained in a savage state of ignorance, they and the colonists will form such an heterogeneous mass of people in this land, as will resist all coalescence into union and association, and portends dreadful evil to this rising continent, or new world.

The native who approximates in his mode of life to the state of enlightened Nature, where liberty is law, and vir tue is love, increases the leaven and ferment of this mass. When man, by an education of example is rendered so