among them of perjury, thieving, fraud, or drunkenness; if we except those who live among the Ruffian Chriftians, with whofe vices they are tainted. Strahlenberg (a) bears teftimony to their honesty. Having employ'd a number of them in a long navigation, he slept in the fame boat with men whofe names he knew not, whofe language he understood not, and yet loft not a particle of his baggage. Being obliged to remain a fortnight among the Oftiacs, upon the river Oby, his baggage lay open in a hut inhabited by a large family, and yet nothing was purloined. The following incident, which he alfo mentions, is remarkable. A Ruffian of Tobolski, in the courfe of a long journey, lodged one night in an Oftiac's hut, and the next day on the road miffed his purfe with a hundred rubles. His landlord's fon, hunting at fome distance from the hut, found the purfe, but left it there. By his father's order, he covered it with branches, to fecure it in cafe an owner fhould be found. After three months, the Ruffian returning, lodged with the fame Oftiac; and mentioning occafionally the lofs of his purfe, the Oftiac, who at firft did not recollect his face, cry'd out with joy, Art thou the man who "loft that purfe? my fon fhall go and how thee where it lies, "that thou may'ft take it up with thine own hand." The Hottentots (b) have not the leaft notion of theft: tho' immoderately fond of tobacco and brandy, they are employ'd by the Dutch for tending warehoufes full of thefe commodities. Here is an inftance of probity above temptation, even among favages in the first stage of focial life. Some individuals are more liberally endued than others with virtuous principles: may it not be thought, that in that respect nature has been more kind to the Hottentots

(a) Defcription of Ruffia, Siberia, &c.

(b) Kolben,

than

than to many other tribes? Spaniards, fettled on the fea-coaft of Chili, carry on a commerce with neighbouring favages, for bridles, fpurs, knives, and other manufactures of iron; and in return receive oxen, horfes, and even children for flaves. A Spaniard carries his goods there; and after obtaining liberty to difpofe of them, he moves about, and delivers his goods, without the leaft referve, to every one who bargains with him. When all is fold, he intimates his departure; and every purchaser hurries with his goods to him; and it is not known that any one Indian ever broke his engagement. They give him a guard to carry him. fafe out of their territory, with all the flaves, horfes, and cattle he has purchased. The favages of Brazil are faithful to their promifes, and to the treaties they make with the Portuguese. Upon fome occafions, they may be accufed of error and wrong judgement, but never of injustice nor of duplicity.

While the earth was thinly peopled, plenty of food, procured by hunting and fishing, promoted population; but as population leffens the ftock of animal food, a favage nation, encreafing in numbers, must spread wider and wider for more game. Thus tribes, at first widely separated from each other, approach gradually till they become neighbours. Hence a new scene with refpect to morality. Differences about their hunting-fields, about their game, about perfonal injuries, multiply between neighbours; and every quarrel is blown into a flame, by the averfion men naturally have to strangers. Anger, hatred, and revenge, find now vent, which formerly lay latent without an object: diffocial paffions prevail without control, because among favages morality is no match for them; and cruelty becomes predominant in the human race. Ancient history accordingly is full of enormous cruelties; witnefs the incurfions of the northern barbarians into the Roman empire; and witnefs the incurfions of Genhizcan and Ta

merlane

merlane into the fertile countries of Afia, fpreading destruction with fire and fword, and fparing neither man, woman, nor in

fant.

Malevolent paffions daily exercised against persons of a different tribe, acquiring ftrength by exercife, came to be vented against perfons even of the fame tribe; and the privilege long enjoy'd by individuals, of avenging the wrongs done to them, beftow'd irresistible force upon fuch paffions (a). The history of ancient Greece presents nothing to the reader but ufurpations, affaffinations, and other horrid crimes. The names of many famous for wickedness, are ftill preferved; Atreus, for example, Eteocles, Alcmeon, Phedra, Clytemneftra. The ftory of Pelops and his defcendents, is a chain of criminal horrors: during that period, parricide and incest were ordinary incidents. Euripides reprefents Medea vowing revenge against her husband Jason, and laying a plot to poifon him. Of that infamous plot the chorus exprefs their approbation, justifying every woman who, in like circumftances, acts the fame part.

The frequent incurfions of northern barbarians into the Roman empire, fpred defolation and ruin through the whole. The Romans, from the highest polish degenerating into favages, affumed by degrees the cruel and bloody manners of their conquerors; and the conquerors and conquered, blended into one mafs, equalled the grossest barbarians of ancient times in ignorance and brutality. Clovis, King of the Franks, even after his converfion to Christianity, affaffinated without remorfe his nearest kinfinan. The children of Clodomir, ann. 530, were affaffinated by their two uncles. In the thirteenth century, Ezzelino de Aromano obtained the fovereignty of Padua, by maffacring 12,000 of his fellow-citizens. Galeas Sforza, Duke of Milan, was affaffinated

(a) See Hiftorical Law-tracts, tract 1.

ann.

ann. 1476 in the cathedral church of Milan, after the affaffins had put up put up their prayers for courage to perpetrate the deed. It is a still stronger proof how low morality was in those days, that the Pope himself, Sextus IV. attempted to affaffinate the two brothers, Laurent and Julien de Medicis ; chufing the elevation of the host as a proper time, when the people would be busy about their devotions. Nay more, that very Pope, with unparallelled impudence, excommunicated the Florentines for doing justice upon the intended affaffins. The most facred oaths were in vain employed as a fecurity against that horrid crime. Childebert II. King of the Franks, enticed Magnovald to his court, by a folemn oath that he should receive no harm; and yet made no difficulty to affaffinate him during the gaiety of a banquet. But these instances, however horrid, make no figure compared with the maffacre of St Bartholomew, where many thousands were inhumanly and treacherously butchered. Even fo late as the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, affaffination was not held in every cafe to be criminal. Many folicitous applications were made to general councils of Chriftian clergy, to declare it criminal in every cafe; but without fuccefs. Ferdinand King of Aragon and Navarre, after repeated affaffinations and acts of perfidy, obtained the appellation of Great fo little authority had the moral fenfe during these dark ages.

An.

But it is scarce necessary to mention particular inftances of the overbearing power of malevolent paffions during fuch ages. opinion, formerly univerfal, that the innocent may be justly involved in the fame punishment with the guilty, is of itfelf irrefragable evidence, that morality once had very little influence when oppofed by revenge. There is no moral principle more evident, than that punishment cannot be inflicted with juftice but upon the guilty; and yet in Greece, the involving of the innocent with the guilty in the fame punishment, was authorifed even by pofi

tive

tive law. By an Athenian law, a man committing facrilege, or betraying his country, was banished with all his children (a). And when a tyrant was put to death, his children fuffered the fame fate (b). The punishment of treafon in Macedon, was extended against the criminal's relations (c). Hanno, a citizen of Carthage, formed a plot to enflave his country, by poisoning the whole fenate at a banquet. He was tortured to death; and his children, with all his relations, were cut off without mercy, tho' they had no acceffion to his guilt. Among the Japannese, a people remarkably ferocious, it is the practice to involve children and relations in the punishment of capital crimes. Even Cicero, the chief man for learning in the most enlightened period of the Roman republic, and a celebrated moralift, approves that practice: "Nec vero me fugit, quam fit acerbum parentum fcelera filiorum pœnis lui: fed hoc præclare legibus comparatum eft, ut caritas "liberorum amiciores parentes reipublicæ redderet * (d)." In Britain, every one knows, that murder was retaliated, not only against the criminal and his relations, but against his whole clan; a practice fo common as to be distinguished by a peculiar name, that of deadly feud. As late as the days of King Edmund, a law was made in England, prohibiting deadly feud, except between the relations of the perfon murdered and the murderer himself.

"I am fenfible of the hardship of punishing the child for the crime of the parent: this, however, is a wife enactment of our laws; for hereby the parent "is bound to the intereft of the ftate by the ftrongeft of all ties, the affection to "his offspring."

(a) Meurfeus de legibus Atticis, lib. 2. cap. 2.

(b) Eod. lib. 2. cap. 15.

(c) Quintus Curtius, lib. 6. cap. 11.

(d) Ep. 12. ad Brutum.

VOL. II.

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