delivered from the many inconveniences of old age; and can, perhaps,
recount to his great grandson a surprising tradition of actions before
any records of their nation were extant. The young swarm of Hypanians,
who may be advanced one hour in life, approach his person with respect,
and listen to his improving discourse. Everything he says will seem
wonderful to their short lived generation. The compass of a day will be
esteemed the whole duration of time; and the first dawn of light will,
in their chronology, be styled the great era of their creation.
Let us now suppose this venerable insect, this _Nestor_ of _Hypania_,
should, a little before his death, and about sunset, send for all his
descendants, his friends and his acquaintances, out of the desire he may
have to impart his last thoughts to them, and to admonish them with his
departing breath. They meet, perhaps, under the spacious shelter of a
mushroom, and the dying sage addresses himself to them after the
following manner:
"Friends and fellow-citizens! I perceive the longest life must, however,
end: the period of mine is now at hand; neither do I repine at my fate,
since my great age has become a burden to me, and there is nothing new
to me under the sun: the changes and revolutions I have seen in my
country, the manifold private misfortunes to which we are all liable,
the fatal diseases incident to our race, have abundantly taught me this
lesson, that no happiness can be secure and lasting which is placed in
things that are out of our power. Great is the uncertainty of life! A
whole brood of our infants have perished in a moment by a keen blast!
Shoals of our straggling youth have been swept into the ocean by an
unexpected breeze! What wasteful desolation have we not suffered from
the deluge of a sudden shower! Our strongest holds are not proof against
a storm of hail, and even a dark cloud damps the very stoutest heart.
"I have lived in the first ages, and conversed with insects of a larger
size and stronger make, and, I must add, of greater virtue than any can
boast of in the present generation. I must conjure you to give yet
further credit to my latest words, when I assure you that yonder sun,
which now appears westward, beyond the water, and seems not to be far
distant from the earth, in my remembrance stood in the middle of the
sky, and shot his beams directly down upon us. The world was much more
enlightened in those ages, and the air much warmer. Think it not dotage
in me if I affirm that glorious being moves: I saw his first setting out
in the east, and I began my race of life near the time when he began his
immense career. He has for several ages advanced along the sky with vast
heat and unparalleled brightness; but now, by his declination and a
sensible decay, more especially of late, in his vigour, I foresee that
all nature must fall in a little time, and that the creation will lie
buried in darkness in less than a century of minutes.
"Alas! my friends, how did I once flatter myself with the hopes of
abiding here forever! how magnificent are the cells which I hollowed out
for myself! what confidence did I repose in the firmness and spring of
my joints, and in the strength of my pinions! _But I have lived long
enough to nature, and even to glory._ Neither will any of you, whom I
leave behind, have equal satisfaction in life, in the dark declining age
which I see is already begun."
Thus far this agreeable unknown writer--too agreeable, we may hope, to
remain always concealed. The fine allusion to the character of _Julius
Cæsar_, whose words he has put into the mouth of this illustrious son of
_Hypanis_, is perfectly just and beautiful, and aptly points out the
moral of this inimitable piece, the design of which would have been
quite perverted, had a virtuous character, a _Cato_ or a _Cicero_, been
made choice of to have been turned into ridicule. Had this _life of a
day_ been represented as employed in the exercise of virtue, it would
have an equal dignity with a life of any limited duration, and,
according to the exalted sentiments of Tully, would have been preferable
to an immortality filled with all the pleasures of sense, if void of
those of a higher kind: but as the views of this vainglorious insect
were confined within the narrow circle of his own existence, as he only
boasts the magnificent cells he has built and the length of happiness he
has enjoyed, he is the proper emblem of all such insects of the human
race, whose ambition does not extend beyond the like narrow limits; and
notwithstanding the splendour they appear in at present, they will no
more deserve the regard of posterity than the butterflies of the last
spring. In vain has history been taken up in describing the numerous
swarms of this mischievous species which has infested the earth in the
successive ages: now it is worth the inquiry of the virtuous, whether
the _Rhine_ or the _Adige_ may not, perhaps, swarm with them at present,
as much as the banks of the _Hypanis_; or whether that silver rivulet,
the _Thames_, may not show a specious molehill, covered with inhabitants
of the like dignity and importance. The busy race of beings attached to
these fleeting enjoyments are indeed all of them engaged in the pursuit
of happiness, and it is owing to their imperfect notions of it that they
stop so far short in their pursuit. The present prospect of pleasure
seems to bound their views, and the more distant scenes of happiness,
when what they now propose shall be attained, do not strike their
imagination. It is a great stupidity or thoughtlessness not to perceive
that the happiness of rational creatures is inseparably connected with
immortality. Creatures only endowed with sensation may in a low sense be
reputed happy, so long as their sensations are pleasing; and if these
pleasing sensations are commensurate with the time of their existence,
this measure of happiness is complete. But such beings as are endowed
with _thought_ and _reflection_ cannot be made happy by any limited term
of happiness, how great soever its duration may be. The more exquisite
and more valuable their enjoyments are, the more painful must be the
thought that they are to have an end; and this pain of expectation must
be continually increasing, the nearer the end approaches. And if these
beings are themselves immortal, and yet insecure of the continuance of
their happiness, the case is far worse, since an eternal void of
delight, if not to say a state of misery, must succeed. It would be here
of no moment, whether the time of their happiness were measured by
_days_ or _hours_, by _months_ or _years_, or by _periods_ of the most
immeasurable length: these swiftly-flowing streams bear no proportion to
that ocean of infinity where they must finish their course. The longest
duration of finite happiness avails nothing when it is past: nor can the
memory of it have any other effect than to renew a perpetual pining
after pleasures never to return; and since virtue is the only pledge and
security of a happy immortality, the folly of sacrificing it to any
temporal advantage, how important soever they may appear, must be
infinitely great, and cannot but leave behind it an eternal regret.
* * * * *
ON SMUGGLING, AND ITS VARIOUS SPECIES.
Sir,--There are many people that would be thought, and even think
themselves, _honest_ men, who fail nevertheless in particular points of
honesty; deviating from that character sometimes by the prevalence of
mode or custom, and sometimes through mere inattention, so that their
_honesty_ is partial only, and not _general_ or universal. Thus one who
would scorn to overreach you in a bargain, shall make no scruple of
tricking you a little now and then at cards: another, that plays with
the utmost fairness, shall with great freedom cheat you in the sale of
a horse. But there is no kind of dishonesty into which otherwise good
people more easily and frequently fall, than that of defrauding
government of its revenues by smuggling when they have an opportunity,
or encouraging smugglers by buying their goods.
I fell into these reflections the other day, on hearing two gentlemen of
reputation discoursing about a small estate, which one of them was
inclined to sell and the other to buy; when the seller, in recommending
the place, remarked, that its situation was very advantageous on this
account, that, being on the seacoast in a smuggling country, one had
frequent opportunities of buying many of the expensive articles used in
a family (such as tea, coffee, chocolate, brandy, wines, cambrics,
Brussels laces, French silks, and all kinds of India goods) 20, 30, and,
in some articles, 50 _per cent._ cheaper than they could be had in the
more interior parts, of traders that paid duty. The other _honest_
gentleman allowed this to be an advantage, but insisted that the seller,
in the advanced price he demanded on that account, rated the advantage
much above its value. And neither of them seemed to think dealing with
smugglers a practice that an _honest_ man (provided he got his goods
cheap) had the least reason to be ashamed of.
At a time when the load of our public debt, and the heavy expense of
maintaining our fleets and armies to be ready for our defence on
occasion, makes it necessary not only to continue old taxes, but often
to look out for new ones, perhaps it may not be unuseful to state this
matter in a light that few seem to have considered it in.
The people of Great Britain, under the happy constitution of this
country, have a privilege few other countries enjoy, that of choosing
the third branch of the legislature, which branch has alone the power of
regulating their taxes. Now, whenever the government finds it necessary
for the common benefit, advantage, and safety of the nation, for the
security of our liberties, property, religion, and everything that is
dear to us, that certain sums shall be yearly raised by taxes, duties,
&c., and paid into the public treasury, thence to be dispensed by
government for those purposes, ought not every _honest man_ freely and
willingly to pay his just proportion of this necessary expense? Can he
possibly preserve a right to that character, if by fraud, stratagem, or
contrivance, he avoids that payment in whole or in part?
What should we think of a companion who, having supped with his friends
at a tavern, and partaken equally of the joys of the evening with the
rest of us, would nevertheless contrive by some artifice to shift his
share of the reckoning upon others, in order to go off scot-free? If a
man who practised this would, when detected, be deemed and called a
scoundrel, what ought he to be called who can enjoy all the inestimable
benefits of public society, and yet, by smuggling or dealing with
smugglers, contrive to evade paying his just share of the expense, as
settled by his own representatives in parliament, and wrongfully throw
it upon his honest and, perhaps, much poorer neighbours? He will,
perhaps, be ready to tell me that he does not wrong his neighbours; he
scorns the imputation; he only cheats the king a little, who is very
able to bear it. This, however, is a mistake. The public treasure is the
treasure of the nation, to be applied to national purposes. And when a
duty is laid for a particular public and necessary purpose, if, through
smuggling, that duty falls short of raising the sum required, and other
duties must therefore be laid to make up the deficiency, all the
additional sum laid by the new duties and paid by other people, though
it should amount to no more than a halfpenny or a farthing per head, is
so much actually picked out of the pockets of those other people by the
smugglers and their abettors and encouragers. Are they, then, any better
or other than pickpockets? and what mean, low, rascally pickpockets must
those be that can pick pockets for halfpence and for farthings?
I would not, however, be supposed to allow, in what I have just said,
that cheating the king is a less offence against honesty than cheating
the public. The king and the public, in this case, are different names
for the same thing; but if we consider the king distinctly it will not
lessen the crime: it is no justification of a robbery, that the person
robbed was rich and able to bear it. The king has as much right to
justice as the meanest of his subjects; and as he is truly the common
_father_ of his people, those that rob him fall under the Scripture we
pronounced against the son _that robbeth his father and saith it is no
sin_.
Mean as this practice is, do we not daily see people of character and
fortune engaged in it for trifling advantages to themselves? Is any lady
ashamed to request of a gentleman of her acquaintance, that, when he
returns from abroad, he would smuggle her home a piece of silk or lace
from France or Flanders? Is any gentleman ashamed to undertake and
execute the commission? Not in the least. They will talk of it freely,
even before others whose pockets they are thus contriving to pick by
this piece of knavery.
Among other branches of the revenue, that of the post office is, by a
late law, appropriated to the discharge of our public debt, to defray
the expenses of the state. None but members of parliament and a few
public officers have now a right to avoid, by a frank, the payment of
postage. When any letter, not written by them or on their business, is
franked by any of them, it is a hurt to the revenue, an injury which
they must now take the pains to conceal by writing the whole
superscription themselves. And yet such is our insensibility to justice
in this particular, that nothing is more common than to see, even in a
reputable company, a _very honest_ gentleman or lady declare his or her
intention to cheat the nation of threepence by a frank, and, without
blushing, apply to one of the very legislators themselves, with a modest
request that he would be pleased to become an accomplice in the crime
and assist in the perpetration.
There are those who, by these practices, take a great deal in a year out
of the public purse, and put the money into their own private pockets.
If, passing through a room where public treasure is deposited, a man
takes the opportunity of clandestinely pocketing and carrying off a
guinea, is he not truly and properly a thief? And if another evades
paying into the treasury a guinea he ought to pay in, and applies it to
his own use, when he knows it belongs to the public as much as that
which has been paid in, what difference is there in the nature of the
crime or the baseness of committing it?
* * * * *
REMARKS CONCERNING THE SAVAGES OF NORTH AMERICA.
Savages we call them, because their manners differ from ours, which we
think the perfection of civility; they think the same of theirs.
Perhaps, if we could examine the manners of different nations with
impartiality, we should find no people so rude as to be without any
rules of politeness, nor any so polite as not to have some remains of
rudeness.
The Indian men, when young, are hunters and warriors; when old,
counsellors; for all their government is by the council or advice of the
sages. There is no force, there are no prisons, no officers to compel
obedience or inflict punishment. Hence they generally study oratory, the
best speaker having the most influence. The Indian women till the
ground, dress the food, nurse and bring up the children, and preserve
and hand down to posterity the memory of public transactions. These
employments of men and women are accounted natural and honourable.
Having few artificial wants, they have abundance of leisure for
improvement by conversation. Our laborious manner of life, compared with
theirs, they esteem slavish and base; and the learning on which we value
ourselves, they regard as frivolous and useless. An instance of this
occurred at the treaty of Lancaster, in Pennsylvania, anno 1744, between
the government of Virginia and the Six Nations. After the principal
business was settled, the commissioners from Virginia acquainted the
Indians, by a speech, that there was at Williamsburgh a college, with a
fund for educating Indian youth; and that, if the chiefs of the Six
Nations would send down half a dozen of their sons to that college, the
government would take care that they should be well provided for, and
instructed in all the learning of the white people. It is one of the
Indian rules of politeness not to answer a public proposition the same
day that it is made; they think it would be treating it as a light
matter, and that they show it respect by taking time to consider it, as
of a matter important. They therefore deferred their answer till the day
following, when their speaker began by expressing their deep sense of
the kindness of the Virginia government in making them that offer; "for
we know," says he, "that you highly esteem the kind of learning taught
in those colleges, and that the maintenance of our young men, while with
you, would be very expensive to you. We are convinced, therefore, that
you mean to do us good by your proposal; and we thank you heartily. But
you, who are wise, must know that different nations have different
conceptions of things; and you will therefore not take it amiss if our
ideas of this kind of education happen not to be the same with yours. We
have had some experience of it: several of our young people were
formerly brought up at the colleges of the northern provinces; they were
instructed in all your sciences; but when they came back to us, they
were bad runners, ignorant of every means of living in the woods, unable
to bear either cold or hunger, knew neither how to build a cabin, take a
deer, nor kill an enemy, spoke our language imperfectly, were therefore
neither fit for hunters, warriors, nor counsellors; they were totally
good for nothing. We are, however, not the less obliged by your kind
offer, though we decline accepting it; and, to show our grateful sense
of it, if the gentlemen of Virginia will send us a dozen of their sons,
we will take great care of their education, instruct them in all we
know, and make _men_ of them."
Having frequent occasions to hold public councils, they have acquired
great order and decency in conducting them. The old men sit in the
foremost ranks, the warriors in the next, and the women and children in
the hindmost. The business of the women is to take exact notice of what
passes, imprint it in their memories, for they have no writing, and
communicate it to their children. They are the records of the council,
and they preserve the tradition of the stipulations in treaties a
hundred years back; which, when we compare with our writings, we always
find exact. He that would speak, rises. The rest observe a profound
silence. When he has finished and sits down, they leave him five or six
minutes to recollect, that, if he has omitted anything he intended to
say, or has anything to add, he may rise again and deliver it. To
interrupt another, even in common conversation, is reckoned highly
indecent. How different this is from the conduct of a polite British
House of Commons, where scarce a day passes without some confusion that
makes the speaker hoarse in calling _to order_; and how different from
the mode of conversation in many polite companies of Europe, where, if
you do not deliver your sentence with great rapidity, you are cut off in
the middle of it by the impatient loquacity of those you converse with,
and never suffered to finish it!
The politeness of these savages in conversation is indeed carried to
excess, since it does not permit them to contradict or deny the truth of
what is asserted in their presence. By this means they indeed avoid
disputes, but then it becomes difficult to know their minds, or what
impression you make upon them. The missionaries who have attempted to
convert them to Christianity all complain of this as one of the great
difficulties of their mission. The Indians hear with patience the truths
of the gospel explained to them, and give their usual tokens of assent
and approbation: you would think they were convinced. No such matter. It
is mere civility.
A Swedish minister, having assembled the chiefs of the Susquehanna
Indians, made a sermon to them, acquainting them with the principal
historical facts on which our religion is founded; such as the fall of
our first parents by eating an apple; the coming of Christ to repair the
mischief; his miracles and sufferings, &c. When he had finished, an
Indian orator stood up to thank him. "What you have told us," says he,
"is all very good. We are much obliged by your kindness in coming so far
to tell us those things which you have heard from your mothers. In
return, I will tell you some of those we have heard from ours.
"In the beginning, our fathers had only the flesh of animals to subsist
on, and if their hunting was unsuccessful, they were starving. Two of
our young hunters, having killed a deer, made a fire in the woods to
broil some parts of it. When they were about to satisfy their hunger,
they beheld a beautiful young woman descend from the clouds, and seat
herself on that hill which you see yonder among the Blue Mountains. They
said to each other, it is a spirit that perhaps has smelt our broiling
venison, and wishes to eat of it: let us offer some to her. They
presented her with the tongue: she was pleased with the taste of it, and
said, Your kindness shall be rewarded; come to this place after thirteen
moons, and you shall find something that will be of great benefit in
nourishing you and your children to the latest generations. They did so,
and, to their surprise, found plants they had never seen before, but
which, from that ancient time, have been constantly cultivated among us,
to our great advantage. Where her right hand had touched the ground,
they found maize; where her left hand had touched it, they found
kidney-beans; and where she had sat on it, they found tobacco." The good
missionary, disgusted with this idle tale, said, "What I delivered to
you were sacred truths, but what you tell me is mere fable, fiction, and
falsehood." The Indian, offended, replied, "My brother, it seems your
friends have not done you justice in your education; they have not well
instructed you in the rules of common civility. You saw that we, who
understand and practise those rules, believed all your stories; why do
you refuse to believe ours?"
When any of them come into our towns, our people are apt to crowd around
them, gaze upon them, and incommode them where they desire to be
private; this they esteem great rudeness, and the effect of the want of
instruction in the rules of civility and good manners. "We have," say
they "as much curiosity as you; and when you come into our towns, we
wish for opportunities of looking at you; but for this purpose, we hide
ourselves behind bushes, where you are to pass, and never intrude
ourselves into your company."
Their manner of entering one another's villages has likewise its rules.
It is reckoned uncivil in travelling strangers to enter a village
abruptly, without giving notice of their approach. Therefore, as soon as
they arrive within hearing, they stop and halloo, remaining there till
invited to enter. Two old men usually come out to them and lead them in.
There is in every village a vacant dwelling called the strangers' house.
Here they are placed, while the old men go round from hut to hut,
acquainting the inhabitants that strangers are arrived, who are probably
hungry and weary; and every one sends them what he can spare of
victuals, and skins to repose on. When the strangers are refreshed,
pipes and tobacco are brought, and then, but not before, conversation
begins, with inquiries who they are, whither bound, what news, &c, and
it usually ends with offers of service if the strangers have occasion
for guides, or any necessaries for continuing their journey; and nothing
is exacted for the entertainment.
* * * * *
ON FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND THE PRESS.
Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government: when this
support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved,
and tyranny is erected on its ruins. Republics and limited monarchies
derive their strength and vigour from a popular examination into the
actions of the magistrates; this privilege, in all ages, has been, and
always will be, abused. The best of men could not escape the censure and
envy of the times they lived in. Yet this evil is not so great as it may
appear at first sight. A magistrate who sincerely aims at the good of
society will always have the inclinations of a great majority on his
side, and an impartial posterity will not fail to render him justice.