P.S. My brain is so busied by its fears that I forgot to caution thee
against a mistake into which it is probable this letter may lead. I
mentioned, in one of my last, the project I had conceived of leaving
England. Do not imagine I have abandoned a design on which the more I
reflect the more I am intent. The great end of life is to benefit
community. My mind in its present situation is too deeply affected
freely and without incumbrance to exert itself--This is weakness!--But
not the less true, Oliver. We are at present so imbued in prejudice,
have drunken so deeply of the cup of error, that, after having received
taints so numerous and ingrained, to wish for perfect consistency in
virtue I doubt were vain. Here or at the antipodes alike I should
remember her: but I should not alike be so often tempted and deluded by
false hopes: the current of thought would not so often meet with
impediments, to arrest, divide, and turn it aside.
I have studied to divine in what land or among what people, whether
savage or such as we call polished, the energies of mind might be most
productive of good. But this is a discovery which I have yet to make.
The reasons are so numerous on each side that I have formed a plan for
a kind of double effort. I think of sailing for America, where I may
aid the struggles of liberty, may freely publish all which the efforts
of reason can teach me, and at the same time may form a society of
savages, who seem in consequence of their very ignorance to have a
less quantity of error, and therefore to be less liable to repel truth
than those whose information is more multifarious. A merchant, with
whom by accident I became acquainted, and who is a man of no mean
understanding, approves and has engaged to promote my plan. But of this
if I come to Wenbourne Hill we will talk further. Once more, Oliver,
adieu.