engaged the minds of the commonalty in labour for them at home; if they submitted, they were patted on the back and called 'industrious.' By the latter, they shipped them off by wholesale to distant regions, out of the way of the contagious example of those mutinous comrades who could not kelp thinking, in the intervals of task-work, they were butts for Power to play her pranks upon. If these last vented thought in any murmur or complaint of hard destiny, the war cry of 'Sedition' was raised by the great men of the land, who admonished them to silence and submission to what they were graciously pleased to call 'rank and natural gradation,' by hearty cuts of the scourge, by a few years of imprisonment, more or less; a few, more or less, were deemed of no immediate consequence to those who were naturally inferior intellect and capability of enjoyment, and who therefore ought to be kept in proper subordination. If, stung to madness, they endeavoured to shake off the yoke by open violence, they were overpowered by the myrmidons of official power and dignity, who cried 'Treason, anarchy, rebellion!' and dispatched out of the way as quickly as possible.

"The sale and purchase of surface by metes and bounds, of the source of food and clothing,

as well as of food and clothing the produce, had been introduced long before and this unequal distribution of things in their nature common, and formed to bestow equal happiness on all, is the basis of civilization. These are the things which are affirmed to be 'of course,' which must exist of necessity. This is the origin of Pride and Avarice in the rich, of want of natural rest in the mass, and consequent ignorance, in turn the parent of crime, and unnatural feeling of every sort. If the poor sigh for the enjoyments, real or fanciful, of the rich who command them exclusively, the latter call them envious and unthankful, ignorantly impatient: if they will not submit to injury, to aggression of natural laws, without resistance; they are termed revengeful, malicious. The artificial relations of riches and poverty have begot the unnatural vices (vices because unnatural) of drunkenness and theft, and rendered the commission of homicide a thousand-fold more frequent. It has induced man to seek temporary alleviation from misery in the fumes of intoxicating liquors; it has caused him to take forcibly from others who have in excess that of which he has none, and deem such taking no crime: it is continually hurrying him to an excess of irritation, which, productive of delirious rage, instigates him to

shed the blood of his fellow-men. Why will man continue to pursue the phantom which mocks his grasp? Why will he seek happiness where long and sad experience teaches him it is not to be found? Why will he not turn to the pure enjoyments of his being, to his peculiar enjoyments as a rational creature, to the investigation of the material and immaterial world, by the light of true knowledge; to his own true position in the universe? Why will he continue to suffer imagination to lead judgment astray, in opposition to internal selfconviction? Every real blessing of which his nature is susceptible, is within his reach, his easy reach; and he, ungrateful, spurns them, to clear his path to the attainment of what he can keep no longer than the philosopher could cage the sunbeams. He enters into combinations foreign to the elements of his existence, and then stares in stupid wonder, because they produce not the expected pleasurable compound, which their essential properties deny. Often driven to despair by those worst of evils, the evils of the imagination, tormented with the fear of encountering the censure of the weakest or worst of his species, he terminates his existenee by self-murder, as being a burthen too heavy to be borne. Did you ever hear of an insolvent savage, cutting

his throat from fear of a creditor's jail? I trow

not.

"Nature seemingly says to her children, 'Come to my arms, my offspring, there is room for you all in my bosom; you are all equally dear to me: I gave you birth for suitable enjoyment, why will you not be virtuous and happy, as you may, by conforming to my simple and easy precepts? Why will you so wantonly disobey the commands issued to every one of you by my secret dictation? Why will you madly become vicious and unhappy, by wandering from my paths so flowery, so charming? How often must the monitor I have given to each of you, exert her warning voice in hoarse appeal, which should only breathe in softest whisper? How long will you be deceived by that monstrous progeny I scorn to call mine, who, forsaking my laws, delight in leading others into their own labyrinths of wickedness and craft, unknown to me, and those who still wisely love my purity, my benevolence, my forgiveness?'

"Here we may remark, what an accession has been made to the virulence of some diseases, which seem interwoven with the thread of animal life, and how large an addition has been made to the Natural Catalogue, by the introduction of Luxury and

the excessive use of flesh as a nutriment. How few are the accidents and diseases peculiar to animal existence in general, or to any one species in particular, when continuing in the sphere assigned to them by Nature! To what natural ailments are the horse and the dog liable? perhaps to none, unless those may be called such to which she herself applies a corrective. It is when they enter on a state of foreign excitement in the service of man, that disease extends its influence, and becomes so fatal and so it is with man himself; Idleness and Luxury enervate the faculties of his body and mind, and blunt that acumen of intellect which should constitute his glory. Certainly, his teeth and stomach are well able to masticate and digest flesh, he may well be defined as both carnivorous and frugivorous; but I am satisfied, that if he performed no more than needful natural labour, his powers, bodily and mental, might be kept in full vigour by a diet of milk and vegetables, and the palate sufficiently pleased by their compounds.

"Spirituous liquors are in the highest degree detrimental, unless taken in the greatest moderation; their use might be well restricted to perform the office of medicines. This last position will, of course, only apply to man,