NUMBER LV.

ON THE EASINESS OF THE TRANSITION FROM CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION TO COMPARATIVE BARBARISM.

THE philosophers of the last age expatiated often and largely on the felicitous condition of savages. Those simple children of nature, they held up to view as models of human excellence, and as possessing the greatest sum of human enjoyment. With minds unwarped by prejudice, and with hearts unsophisticated, and true to the genuine impulses of nature, their lives reflect, forsooth, the express image of primeval innocence. Knowing neither the galling fetters of law, nor the unnatural and odious distinctions of civilization, they, free as the air they breathe, roam their forests, or together enjoy the sports and pastimes of social intercourse, without obstacle or hinderance. And what though their dwellings are smoky cabins, or nothing better than dens and caves of the earth? What though their raiment, if raiment they have, is foul and squalid? And what though their scanty food is rancid and loathsome? No matter.

Being always accustomed to this way of living, they desire nothing better, and, without any repinings or discontent, they joyfully receive what nature gives. Happy savage! happy in comparison with civilized man, pining under the cruel power of prohibition, doomed to delve the earth or plough the ocean, the slave of artificial wants, the prey of ambition and avarice. Thrice happy savage! Threefold more happy than the child of restraint, of labor and of care; threefold more happy than the slavish muck-worm of civil society, maugre all his superfluous wealth, and his boasted arts and institutions.

Many have run to and Great indeed, and far

Such were the dreams of former days-even of days not long past. But they are known now to be but dreams. Subsequent discoveries have confounded the philosophism of Rousseau, and put to shame the disciples of his school. ro, and knowledge has been increased. beyond all former example, has been the accession of knowledge, within the last forty years, respecting the habitants of our globe. Travellers and voyagers have traversed, as it were, the whole living world in every direction. New regions have been explored. Nations and tribes, formerly unknown or scarcely known, have been closely inspected; their morals, their manners, and their modes of living, carefully noted and accurately described.. And the results are unfavorable alike to the condition, and to the character of the mere child of nature. It is found that the dim lights, which are beheld here and there amidst the thick darkness of the pagan world, sprang from patriarchal tradition; that even in civilized countries, in no wise illumined with the rays of the gospel, the most abominable idolatries, and the most horrible practices in social and domestic life, are sanctioned by

long and immemorial custom; and that the child of nature, the mere savage, “is every where found to be a restless, unfeeling, treacherous and ferocious animal."

There is one respect, however, in which philosophism has been not altogether in the wrong. It is, that the savage state is the most natural, that is to say, the most congenial with the depraved feelings and propensities of the human kind. Well-ordered, social institutions are mounds which virtue erects against vice, and which vice is ever struggling to demolish. Whereas, in what is called the state of nature, every man does what seemeth him good; indulging with little or no restraint in whatever his heart inclines him to. And of all things in the world, this is the sweetest; more gratifying than to be "clothed in purple, to drink in gold, and to sleep upon gold." Nothing is more natural to man than the love of liberty, or more delicious to his heart than the uncontrolled enjoyment of it;-of the liberty of doing es he pleases; of openly acting, in every way, and in all cases, according to his inclinations, without dread of punishment or fear of shame. Upon this liberty-which indeed is the only liberty for which our fallen nature has a sincere and an unreserved liking— the laws of regular government, the customs and opinions of virtuous society, and, above all, the institutes of a most holy religion, are galling checks.

Hence it is, in a considerable part, that the transition from civilization to savageness is much easier than from the latter condition to the former. Almost always, a savage feels a decided preference for his own way of life, and looks down upon the accumulated conveniences of civilized man, not with a cold indifference, but with utter disgust and contempt. Not for all the

wealth that the world could confer, would he barter his liberty. If you take away a savage boy, and bring him into the bosom of civilized society, he pines for his native wilds. Though you feed, and clothe, and instruct him, and even caress him as your own child, he still pines with discontent. Or even if, perchance, you get him to be apparently satisfied with his new situation, after a short sojourn with savages, he becomes as much a savage as ever. But though the ascent is hard and painful, the descent is easy. A boy taken from civilized life, and made to live with savages, how soon he is identified with them, in feeling as well as in manners!—When brought back, after a few years, to his native home, how difficult, how next to impossible it is, to dissolve the charm that had fastened itself upon him; to cure him of his wildness; to make him steady, and industrious, and satisfied under the wholesome restraints of law and religion. It is not theory, but experience that speaks in this wise.

Nor are these the only instances with which experience furnishes us. There is one of much greater importance, and of far deeper interest; it is the apparent unconcern, not to say eagerness, with which multitudes of our countrymen recede from civilized life.— Look! what perpetual streams of emigration from the bosom of a civilized and religious society to the outskirts of the living world. Look! how new levies of the forlorn hope eagerly advance forward, year by year, beyond the last ulterior limits; leaving behind them regions of wilderness, thinly checkered, here and there, with marks of cultivation.

"The world is all before them where to choose."

See the population of an immense frontier,-a population of

millions" of our own color, flesh and blood,"-nearly as destitute of the means of moral and religious improvement as the savage "who yells on the banks of the Missouri "-without schools, without a ministry, without religious institutions, without the Sabbath, without Bibles; sunk and still sinking into the depths of moral debasement; their children growing up under the blasting influence of an unchristian culture, with scarcely any sense of moral or religious obligation!

Not that no part of the spectacle is cheering. The sight of so many frightful wilds, the dreary haunts of ravening beasts, turned into fruitful fields, is delightful, at the same time that it reflects credit upon the industry, the enterprise, the hardihood, and the perseverance of our countrymen. But it is advancing too fast. There are few, if any, even of those old settlements whose population is yearly drained away by thousands, which might not, by improved cultivation, by husbanding all their resources, and by returning to the plain living of former times, be made to support even a great increase of population, while their superior intellectual, social, moral, and religious advantages would much more than countervail any advantage obtainable by emigrating into foreign deserts. The emigrations are not, however, from the old settlements only. The roving spirit of the Tartar and the Arab, seems to have seized the Americans. Even when a recent frontier is scarcely populated in the proportion of the twentieth part of it, they begin to remove further out; as if it were the object nearest their hearts to recede as far as possible from the very appearance of civilization.