particular order of inheritence is prescribed by natural law; for that law only binds parents to support their children so long as they live. It is difficult to perceive why they are not under an equal obligation to secure as far as they have power, the means of subsistence to their infants after their death. Human institutions have scarcely differed more in any thing, than in the limitations which they have imposed on the power of making wills. Justinian calls that a barbarous law which prefers males to females in the order of inheritance; yet, it is the code of modern Europe.Whatever political reasons may have existed to require such a law, there can be none in nature; and if the law be necessary to a particular system, it only proves such a system to be unjust. This preposterous canon of descents, will continue the longer, merely from the accidental circumstance that daughters lose the family name by marriage. By the Roman law a testator could not entirely disinherit his child, except for particular specifical reasons: it seems to be a just restraint on the caprice of parents. But it is unimaginable, that any system of succession, however arbitrary, could be so bad as none at all: and the fact of there being none among the Cherokees, is a great hindrance to the progress of their improvement. In civilized life, the strongest inducement to an unmarried man to labour, is, that he may acquire the means of supporting a wife; and of a married one, that he may leave something to his children. These two hopes give interest to life, and sustain and encourage industry. It is by the operation of these two incentives combined, perhaps, with others, that a large part of every civilized society has something accumulated in anticipation of future wants; this accumulation affords leisure, and leisure the means of improvement; while savages, who are incessantly occupied in providing against immediate and pressing necessities, can never do more than barely subsist.

Some equivalent has been sought for these disadvantages in the superior liberty which savages are supposed to enjoy. It has indeed grown into a political axiom, that on entering into social relations, we relinquish a portion of our natural rights, in order to secure the rest. But it is difficult to discover what natural rights the Cherokees would surrender by such a change. They certainly would not abridge the enjoyment of their personal rights; for now their persons are at the mercy of every one; and there is no remedy for an injury to it, but the chastisement or murder of the offender; and no security whatever exists, that this chastisement, and this murder, will not in fact be inflicted on the party already injured. It is like the liberty we have of fighting a duel with a person who has murdered a father: but are we not more free, because we can arraign the murderer and have him executed without risk to our own lives? As to the right of possession, we are told that in the savage state this is enjoyed without limitation; for there exists a right of each to every thing.' But as Quesnay well observes, this right of each to every thing, is like that of a swallow to all the gnats which float in the atmosphere; a right,

which in fact is limited to those he can catch, and preserve, or consume. In this more accurate sense, the right of possession in the savage state, will be very confined, because it will be restricted to what each can acquire and protect by his personal strength: whereas, the social compact, pledges the whole force of the society to protect each member of it, in the full enjoyment of every thing lawfully acquired. Cicero therefore speaks not only like an orator but a philosopher, in saying, 'Legum denique idcirco omnes servi sumus, ut liberi esse possumus.' The Cherokees then have none of those political institutions which are necessary for the protection of person and property. Let us examine for a moment their domestic relations.

We have been amused from our childhood with affecting stories of tender passions, and romantic constancy, between the sexes of savage nations. Their intercourse among the Cherokees furnishes a mortifying refutation of all these delightful visions. There is no synonym in their language for love, and there cannot be imagined a more contemptuous profanation of its most sacred rites, than the uniform habits of the nation in both sexes. The relation of husband and wife, consecrated in our minds by habitual reverence, hallowed by the most imposing solemnities of religion,-the holy and mysterious tie which unites in indissoluble union the moral elements of the world, which sustains and invigorates our tenderest sympathies and most exalted sentiments-cannot be said to exist at all among the Cherokees. All the fine feelings which the advocates of the superiority of the natural state have assigned to this primitive stage of our social existence, as its peculiar attributes, are, in fact, refinements, of civilization, and have no reality in that state to which they are supposed exclusively to belong. The ray of amorous and poetic fire which Gray triumphantly hailed as having

'Broke the twilight gloom

To cheer the shiv'ring natives' dull abode,'

has never dawned upon the feather-cinctured chiefs, and dusky maids of the Hiwassee.

The word in their language nearest to husband, is aus-te-kee(the man who lives with me.) In most cases only a metaphorical expression, and equally applicable to three or four men at the same time.

Children can consequently never know their fathers with certainty, nor fathers their children. Hence the relation of father and child cannot subsist, because that of husband and wife does not. It is then in perfect conformity with this system, that the ancient English law which supposed the mother to be no relation of the child, should be inverted, and that here, the father should be held

none.

When we see that the Cherokees, the most advanced of all the tribes which border on our frontier, have hardly one of the numberless moral ingredients which enter into the very complicate

mass of civilized society, we may well pause a moment before we begin to sing paans of praise, on nations reclaimed from ignorance and barbarism. In order to reform them, we must know what reformation is needed. I act the part of a candid, though not of a flattering physician, when I suggest that much, nay, that almost every thing yet remains to be done. It is a mistake to imagine a nation civilized because it has black cattle, or plants a few potatoes in the weeds, or spins a gross of broaches of very indifferent cotton. The arts which vary so much in countries equally civilized, are but particular modes in which human intelligence and skill manifest themselves. Civilization relates more to the moral qualities of man, and to his social institutions, than to the particular mode in which he gratifies his wants. Pyrrhus saw across the Lylis that the Romans were no barbarians, though they had neither artillery, steam boats, balloons, gas lights, tea, coffee, nor sugar. Since the modifications under which civilized societies have existed have been almost infinite, we must in order to know what constitutes the essence of civilization, find some qualities which have been common to them all.

As nothing contributes more to the progress and diffusion of social refinement than commerce, it was not extraordinary, that philosophers should ascribe its origin in particular countries, to facilities of commercial intercourse. Accordingly, we find them* assuming it as a fact, that civilization began on the shores of the Mediterranean; and then explaining this assumption by the circumstance of that sea combining so many advantages for maritime communication, by reason of its being a great inlet, without tides, the basin of many rivers, &c. This reasoning is illustrated by the recent history of the British colonies in America, which followed the courses of bays and rivers. The colonies deriving first their subsistence, and afterwards their profit, from their intercourse with Britain, which could only be by water, furnish no argument whatever whence we can deduce the causes of original refinement. Now that our population is independent of Britain, it no longer follows water courses, but fertile land. We have every reason to doubt, nay, even to disbelieve, that the shores of the Mediterranean were the first civilized portions of the earth. The records of the Hindoos, and the Chinese, carrying their sciences to a very remote antiquity, rather induce us to believe, that the arts were transmitted from Hindostan to Arabia and Persia, and thence to Egypt. It is also a circumstance not unworthy of observation, that Egypt is precisely that part of Africa which touches on Asia. Now supposing Asia to have been first civilized, and without great improvements in navigation, the arts could have been carried into Africa by no other way than the isthmus of Suez. This goes far to prove, that the civilization of Egypt was received by transmission; for if it was original, no adequate reason can be assigned why it should begin in Africa, exactly at the point of contact with Asia.

*See Smith's Wealth of Nations, B. J.

And if it was original in Hindostan, it was not because the Indus, and the Ganges offered greater advantages for commercial intercourse than the Nile, the Jennisea, the Oby, the Amoor, the Hoan-ho, the Kian kew, the Amazons, and the Mississippi: But (if we may be allowed to conjecture in so doubtful a case) because Nature had showered with a more bountiful hand on the shores of Asia than elsewhere, productions proper for the sustenance of man. The nutritious Cerealia and fruits of that prolific climate enabled the human race to multiply more rapidly there than in less favoured countries. Increased numbers and the increased intercourse arising from them, made those institutions necessary, without which men cannot exist in crowded societies. Necessity, as the proverb says, is the mother of invention, and so soon as they became necessary, men discovered and adopted them. Hence it is that civilization has begun all over the world, as far as we know, in genial climates and productive soils. The American tribes which had made the greatest progress were under the tropics and not near the pole; were in a high country, and not on the lakes where the hypothesis of Mr. Smith would have induced us to look for them. Nor do commerce and civilisation advance with equal pace. The Phenicians, and Carthaginians, had an earlier and a much more extended commerce than the Greeks and Romans, but they were certainly less refined. The great advantages of navigation have been set forth with a more philosophical discernment by Bacon. He considers commerce not so much as refining the particular nation which carries it on, but as one of the great means for advancing mankind generally in the sciences-as an instrument for diffusing rather than creating knowledge. It is in this sense that he says the prophecy of Daniel, Plurimi pertransibunt et multiplex erit scientia, has been in part fulfilled. For in the very same paragraph, he acknowledges the superiority of the ancients, though they certainly had less commerce than the modernsa superiority which it was reserved for his genius to dispute, and finally to overcome.

It does not appear then, that civilization inheres essentially and inseparably either in commerce or in the arts, though it is intimately connected with both. And whether it originated in necessity, or in the intercourse which resulted from the multiplication of the species, it must have had some intrinsic advantages which prevented the relapse of mankind into barbarism, or it could not have been preserved. The principal of these benefits are, greater security for our personal rights, and the enjoyment of property. These great fundamental objects which lawgivers and rulers have accomplished in an infinite variety of modes, and no doubt from very different motives, are inseparable from our idea of a civilized community. The institutions which have been adopted for this purpose, may be all included under the comprehensive heads, the civilization of Asia and of Europe; and the latter may be divided into that of ancient and that of modern Europe. We know very little of Asiatic institutions in their origin or indeed until a late

period of time. Of this much, however, we are certain, that the nations of Asia have advanced so little since our earliest acquaintance with them, that we must infer, there is something radically vitious in their institutions. For, whatever plausibility there may be in the celebrated hypothesis of Montesquieu, which ascribes the fatal servitude, and eternal degeneracy under which they ling er rather than live, to the operation of climate and surface, powerful arguments may be urged for its refutation. A theory, which is contradicted by one well established fact, is as certainly untrue, as if it were repugnant to all the phenomena. Now, much of Asia has as fine, and indeed almost exactly the same climate as Italy and Greece; yet Italy has been once mistress of the world, and twice the restorer of the arts. These countries have the same climates now that they had when they governed and enlightened the earth:-physical Greece is the same now that it was when Homer sung-when Aristotle and Euclid reasoned-when Demosthenes harangued-and when Epaminondas bled. Italy has not become more voluptuous in its climate since Manlius was expelled the Roman senate for kissing his wife in the presence of his daughter; or since the eloquence of Cicero filled Rome with rapture, and the world with his renown. If the enervating influence of climate be constant, its invigorating energy must be constant also: and for the very reason that Persia has been doomed to perpetual despotism, Greece should have remained for ever free. But neither one nor the other has been the case. The temples of Athens, and the tombs of her heroes are profaned by the footsteps of tyrants and of slaves. Nor can this affecting revolution in the fortune of one of the most splendid nations which has existed, be ascribed wholly to conquest. The spirit of the heroes of Marathon and Salamis had fled before the final reduction of Greece to a foreign power. The difference of Asiatic from European civilization must then be explained by some other cause than the difference of climate, for we find the same spirit in different climates, and different spirits in the same climate. The fundamental institution in which Asia and Europe are most unlike, is that of marriage: and of all possible institutions it is probably that which has the most direct influence on all the others, and indeed on the whole moral and political system of a nation. Without some institution of marriage, no social system could be preserved from detestable vices, if indeed it could exist at all. The next thing to having no such institution as marriage, is to allow a plurality of wives or Polygamy, which is common in most of the eastern nations. Where the heart is never softened by those affecting lessons of parental love, to which we ever recur with new delight and improvement; where filial piety is This sentiment has prompted some of the finest lines of Pope. Me let the tender office long engage,

To rock the cradle of declining age;

With lenient arts extend a mother's breath,

Make languor smile and smooth the bed of death:

Explore the thought, explain the asking eye,

And keep awhile one parent from the sky!'