Their mutual aids, their sister laws proclaims. These same philosophers, when they look back to the early ages, find man a miserable forlorn and wretched being, exposed to every misfortune and addicted to every vice. Frail at first his frame, with nerves ill strung We also can philosophize; but ours is a savage philosophy. When we permit our fancy to carry us back to the beginning of time, we think we can discover the golden age of the poets. Our savage reason makes the best use it can of those glimmering lights that sparkle through the long night of antiquity; and we discover, or think we discover, a hardy race of long-lived savages, who gathered the fruits of the earth in peace, and placed their happiness in mutual love. We do not think it unreasona. ble to suppose that there may have been a time resembling that described by Ovid. Aurea prima sata est ætas, quæ, vindice nullo, And though the time may never have been when "rivers of milk and rivers of nectar" flowed through the plain, in any other way than the land of Canaan flowed with milk and honey; yet, if ever there were a time when men had not commenced the business of accumulation; if ever there were a time when the earth and its fruits were common, when men were uninstructed in the science of hoarding— that time was a golden age. It is a tradition common to all nations, of which we have any knowledge, that these golden days have been: how, if it be not founded on fact, did this tradition originate? l'oets may invent: but how came the poets of all nations to invent the same story? The flowery fictions of the muses may compose a part of the body of the tale; but we feel inclined to believe that there are certain stamina of fact, which are common to the traditions of all the different nations. The Indian sage mourns over the depravity of his nation, and speaks with regret of the days of brotherly love that are past: the days when a portion of the holy fire warmed the breast of every warrior, and the beloved speech was in the mouth of every prophet. The account given by Moses, of the carly ages, corroborates our ideas on this subject. He does not describe those antediluvian pabodies frail, and "nerves ill strung." No: we triarchs as weak timid miserable mortals, with conceive that Cainan, Mahaleel, Jared, and Methuselah must have exceeded the men of the present day as much in bodily strength as they did in the number of their years. It is also a tradition common to all nations that in former days there were giants upon the earth such was the opinion of the Greeks and Romans: and such was the opinion of the Jews. And it was also the opinion of the an cients that their heroes or mighty men were descended from the gods: and this notion seems not to have been peculiar to the Greeks and Romans; for Moses, if we understand him aright, gives it the weight of his testimony when he says, "the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. There were giants in the earth in those days: and also, after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old men of renown." In fine, guided by the feeble lights that antiquity affords, and by our own observation of the enervating nature of luxury, we give it as our candid opinion, that the men of the early ages were infinitely superior to those of the present day. They might worship the sun and moon and hear the voice of God in the thunder; but there is no reason to suppose that they trembled in the presence of the lion, or dreaded the approach of the tiger. No: it is owing to civilization, luxury, and refinement, that they are become inferior, in bodily importance, to the beasts of the descrt; that they find it necessary to have recourse to the mean arts of cunning and dissimulation in all their enterprises against the brutal creation. We should be happy to look forward, to the blissful period which is beautifully described by the philosophic poet : Green swell the mountains, calm the oceans roll, In tenfold pomp the works of peace ascend. But, as we are no poet, when we would dart forward on the wings of our imagination, our flight is impeded by certain prosaic obstacles, which we find it difficult to remove. If we understand the poet rightly, all this happiness is to be brought about by the operation of commerce, civilization, refinement, &c. but we have already proved that the tendency of these things is to produce luxury, corruption, vice, and misery. Here we are at a full stand. The foundation of the building is gone: and the superstructure must dissolve into thin air. In this future world of blessedness, which is so elegantly delineated, we find that men are to dwell in palaces: now, whenever men in. habit palaces, they must have slaves, drudges, brutal bipeds, to support their dignity. And as the poet raises, to "tenfold pomp," the gay description, our savage eye discovers new scenes of miscry and wide extended wretchedness! Cities unwalled stand sparkling to the sun: A pleasant sight truly! but in our mind it awakens disagreeable ideas. We overlook the sparkling walls and glittering roofs,and inquire for the labor which created and sustains this extravagant splendor. Where are the crowds of menials, who wait on the luxurious philosophers? and where are the drudges who clean out the receptacles of filth? Who are to be "hewers of wood and drawers of water" in these New Jerusalems of the bard's imagination? Whenever we see, in any private edifice, productions of labor too great for the exertion of one man, we may safely say, HERE HAS BEEN SLAVERY: here one man has exercised an undue ascendency over another. Here has been superfluity on one side, and want on the other: power and subjection. This is the generation of misery. POWER begat SLAVERY; and slavery begat vice; and vice begat misery. lancholy stranger, "thousand must have toiled, under the iron rod of arbitrary power, to erect these splendid monuments of ambition and folly." The magnificent edifice which the muse of the author of the Columbiad has erect. ed on the banks of the Nile, to receive the delegated sires" of all nations, awakens in our mind no other idea, than that of the labor and fatigue it must have taken to hew so much marble. Apologetical. The ancient Greeks, in the pride of their souls, denominated all the nations of the earth, but themselves, barbarians; and this name they often bestowed on people farther advanced in the career of refinement and civilization than were the Greeks. It is likewise the cus. tom of polished nations, at this day, to stigina tize, every people whose language they do not understand, and whose manners they will not study, with the degrading names of barbarians and savages. We are not displeased with the names: whether they be descriptive of our customs, or meant merely as a mark of dis. tinction between you and us, we are satisfied. We cannot help, however, remarking that you appear to consider the word savage as a name of the greatest reproach. Is a inan inhuman, wicked or cruel; you seem to imagine that you give him an appropriate designation when you call him a savage. Now, you will doubtless excuse us if we follow your plan so far as to make the same use of the word civilized that you do of savage. When we wish to give a suitable appellation to a corrupt and degenerate people, we will call them civilized. When we wish to designate one who practises cunning, dissimulation, falsehood, treachery, we will call him civilized. We are not, then, The traveller, who examines the pyramids of the least offended at the abusive epithets which Egypt, is at first view struck with astonish- you bestow on us and our nation; and we ment at the stupendous exertions of man; but hope that you will not deny us the privilege of the next moment is imbittered with reflections pointing out those errors, vices, and absurdi. on the miseries and distresses of humanity. ties, that flow. from your habits and instituThousands must have toiled," says the me- tions. Plato in his republic pays no attention to the multitude; he devoted all his attention to the formation of a body of sages and of war. riors to keep the common herd in order: is that the plan of our modern philosophers? MANUAL He must always wear a smooth exterior, and conceal his real sentiments behind a mask of impenetrable dissimulation. He must make the most extravagant professions of love and attachment, while hatred and malignity are rankling in his heart. He must bend the knee of submission to the arrogance of power; and feed with never-ceasing adulation the weak vanity of fools. He must resolutely dismiss every lingering attachment to virtue, as an incumbrance incompatible with the nature of his pursuits. He will find the appearance of justice, benevolence, mercy, and candor, occasionally useful; but he must take care not to clog himself with this antiquated rubbish, in reality: it would prove an insuperable obstacle to his refined operations, and, in the end, prove the means of his destruction. He must appear to be an enemy to injustice, cruelty and dissimulation; but he must remember to be possessed of these vices, in fact: he will find them instruments absolutely necesssary in the furtherance of his plans. If he should receive favors, it will be judicious to make professions of the most unbounded gratitude; but he must observe that his gratitude be merely professional: for, otherwise it might become greatly prejudicial to his personal interests. He may affect to be a warin and disinterested friend; but he must he at all times ready to sacrifice his friendship when it comes in competition with the success of his schemes. He must put confidence in none, but live with his friend under the expectation of that friend becoming one day his enemy. He must on no occasion express the resentment he may feel; but meet his enemy with every appearance of respect, under the idea that the time may come when, his enemy's interest and his own being the same, they may act together as friends. He must practise every vice, and descend to every species of meanness, that he may find useful in the progress of his operations; but these things must be transacted as much as possible in the shade. He must assume the garb of piety beneath the snowy mantle of religion he may erect a kennel for the hellhounds of vice, and a harbor for the monsters of iniquity. He must have honor continually in his mouth; but his honor must be vox et præterea nihil. He must form a just estimate of the vices, weaknesses and ruling passions of his associ. ates, and make all these things instrumental to his own advancement. He must keep his head clear, and his heart cold. His own interest must be his polar star to guide him in his voyage through life: and by proper management, every wind that blows, whether "airs from heaven or blasts from hell," may be turned to his own advantage. Hæ tibi erunt artes, O child of civilization! by these means you may rise to eminence: and your name shall go down with eclat to posterity. These are the arts, as a polite writer of your own well observes, which give the man of the world an ascendency over the brutal force of the barbarian. In the prosecution of our plan, we shall take care to produce no maxims but such as we can support by pointed authorities from the ethics of the civilized world. Politics. Our savage education and barbarous prepos. sessions having given us an unconquerable aversion to every species of political intrigue and tergiversation, we felt it incumbent on us, in our preliminary address, to announce to the public that Piomingo was no federalist, no republican, no democrat, no aristocrat, in the cominon acceptation of those terms:" and in this declaration we were guided by a strict regard to truth, which (notwithstanding our intercourse with civilized man) we always have cherished, and shall continue to cherish, as long as the Master of our breath shall permit us to continue on the earth. We were however aware, at the same time, that we were renouncing a subject which would have given life and spirit to our miscellany. Had we engaged in political warfare under the banners of some party already established, or set up a party of our own, (in that case, we should soon have heard of Muscogulgce influence) we might, if we do not overrate our own abilities, have made considerable noise in the world. Had such been our conduct, we have no doubt but that the fate of our paper would have been different. What is now a poor sickly bantling, might have been animosus · infans contending with serpents in its cradle. That which will, under the present circumstances, support a feeble existence for a short time, and die without a groan, might have enjoyed a long life of honor and prosperity. And, who can tell but we might have written our savage self into some post of honor, or (which would have been still better) of profit. The papers, in opposition to the party we might have espoused, would, no doubt, have raised a devil (this word devil is very useful in swelling out a period) of a noise about ap. pointing a foreigner to an office of such great importance; (and we should not have been disposed to have accepted an indifferent situa tion) but we should have been ready to have replied to that charge, by declaring that we were no foreigner, but an indigenous American descended from the great Mingo Pa-Ya Ma. taha, and therefore could not be supposed to be under the influence of any improper preju. dice for or against either of the mighty belliger. ents of Europe who divide the world between them. We should have been able to have said so many keen things about the principles and practices of our political opponents that our Savage would have been universally read; and then, under the mask of patriotism we might have indulged our propensity for slander. We might have collected all the old stories that have appeared in the papers for many years, which, having been retouched by our satirical pencil, and a little fresh coloring added by our skilful hand, would have been exactly to the taste of our newspaper connoisseurs. We might have become very familiar with the names of great men, and abused most outrageously those whom we had never seen. We might have published extracts of letters from "gentlemen of the first respectability, now in Europe," or from "gentlemen high in office," or from gentlemen in the confidence of government." hastily. We have not perhaps a view of the whole gronnd; and we may not be able to judge of the motives which may have induced him to pursue a certain line of conduct In fine, we observed, we should not be ashamed, did necessity require it, to dig for our sub sistence; but the nobler faculties of our mind we never would debase so far as to devote them to the promotion of the views of any man or set of men. "All this may be very true," said our friend, "but it is very silly. There is such a thing as a wheel within a wheel. By professing an attachment to the public welfare and promo ting the views of your political friends, you may substantially serve yourself. You are now in a civilized country, and must learn to act a little like the rest of the world. Politics is the only thing that pleases the taste of the present generation and even that will not go down unless it he rendered palatable by a little spicery. Nothing pleases a man so much as to hear of the miscarriages of his fellow man. He appears to rise in the same proportion that another is degraded. You must attack some eminent person; it is immaterial whether he be one of those in power, or one of those who wish to be in power: that is left to your discretion. Or, if you had rather, you may let our domestic affairs alone for a while, and plunge into the politics of Europe. You may assist Bonaparte to regulate the affairs of the continent, or take on yourself the management of the English fleet-Suppose you were to write a series of essays to prove that Napoleon is the beast with seven heads and ten horns, mentioned in the Revelation. You might com. ment at large upon the heads and the horns and the crowns that are upon the horns."" A friend of ours appeared. to be extremely solicitous that we should engage in politics. We told him that, Gallio like, we cared for none of those things.' "So much the better," said he, "so much the better; if you be not tied by political principles, you are at liberty to choose the party from which you may expect to derive the most profit." We told him that he was again mistaken; that we were not so totally destitute of observation, as not to form an opinion on passing occurrences; but that the intrigue, turpitude, and dereliction of principle, which were discoverable in political concerns, had given us such a distaste to the subject, that the very name had become odious to us. We further added that when a man enters the fields of political warfare under the banners of a party, he must give up all pretensions to independency of sentiment. He must pass on to the very extremes of raucor and animosity, otherwise he will be rejected as lukewarm, and become utterly contemptible. He must oppose all the measures of the party in opposition to his own, whether he deem them, in his private opinion, to be salutary or pernicious. He must support, totis viribus, every measure of his political friends even though he himself may suppose them to be injudicious and wicked. Men whom he knows not, he must panegyrize; and men whom he knows not, he must condemn. Nor is that all: he must sing the praises of those whom he despises; and vilify those who stand high in his estimation. Should he, for a moment, in the vanity of his soul, conceive that he guides We answered, very gravely, that we would the political machine, it will only add to the permit France and England to manage their bitterness of his subsequent mortification,when own affairs: that we were not disposed to con. he finds that he has prostituted the noblest cern ourself with any of those great matters faculties of his soul, for the convenienoe of an which agitate the civilized world; and that we unprincipled intriguer. Moreover, it is dan. were an unambitious unaspiring mortal, congerous to bestow extravagant encomiums on tent with ease and tranquillity. Our friend any man during his life; but let him be once said he perceived that we were headstrong in fairly dead, and we may commend him with our folly; and therefore he would leave us to safety: it is out of his power to prove us a liar our contemplations: and so he did. by the villany of his conduct. It is also un generous and unjust to condemn a man too We observed, in reply to the last observation of our anxious friend, that so many commenta ries had been written on the Revelation by dignified divines and pious laymen, we were apprehensive that nothing new could be elicited on the subject; and that the very thing he now recommended to our consideration had employed many learned heads and ready pens several years ago. suppose "Well then," replied he, nothing abashed with the repulse we had given him, " you prove England to be the great whore that sitteth upon many waters. Will there not be something new in that ?” If we might be permitted to explain your civilized terms in our own savage manner, we should have no objection to any of your political appellations. If federalism consist in a sincere attachment to the principles contained in the constitution of the United States, we are a feder. alist. It by republicanism be meant a strict adherence to those principles which promote the public weal, we are a republican. As to democracy-we acknowledge the right of the people to govern themselves: would to God, they possessed wisdom enough to enable them to do so with propriety! We are the friend of aristocracy; but it is that species of aristocracy which is to be found among the Indian nations: the aristocracy of virtue. Our mind soars far above the petty distinctions of party. We can trace political prejudices to their origin, and pity the weakness of humanity. THE SAVAGE-NO. VIII. Happiness. We have endeavored to prove that happiness is founded on virtue; and that savage nations are more virtuous than those that are civilized. If this be done, it will follow, as a direct consequence, that those in a state of nature are happier than those advanced in the career of luxury and refinement. That man who is either raised above. or depressed below, his species cannot be happy. He has no society. There are none to whom he can communicate his thoughts: who can participate in his sorrows or his joys. From this consideration, some have deduced an argument in favor of the happiness of the lower ranks in every civilized community. "These men have many companions," say they," why can they not partake of those pleasures that arise from association with their fellows?" We have already shown, in our last number, that the circumstances, of their situation are such as to deprive them of those qualities of the mind that give a charm to the social state. Some of your divines assert that the damned in hell, will have a full prospect of the blessed in heaven. This, they very justly allege, will be a great enhancement of the punishment of the former; whether or no they suppose it will add any thing to the joys of the latter, we cannot tell. Such is the situation of the indigent: they not only groan beneath the pressure of evil; but they have the additional mortification of beholding their fellow men in the possession of good. They dare not dis. cover the malice which they feel against their superiors; but they let loose every malignant passion against their partners in misfortune. Thus malefactors in a dungeon and wild beasts in a cage, when they find it impossible to destroy the surrounding crowd, direct their vengeance against each other, and even against the walls of their prison. That this malignity exists in the multitude, we are certain: and that we have given the true cause of its existence, we firmly believe. If any one be disposed to contend that the crowd do not cherish these ferocious and venge. ful passions, let him take a retrospective view of the situation of France, when the heavy hand of despotism was raised from the shoulders of the degraded time-serving populace. Like a mighty torrent, long confined by im. passable barriers, they burst forth at once, and overwhelmed the fair fielus of society with the waves of desolation. No longer awed by the iron rod of power, they gave full play to their long compressed but never-dying ferocity. Those whom yesterday they adored, to-day were the objects of their unrelenting fury. Over those, to whom yesterday they cringed as the most obedient of slaves, they brandished, to-day, the bloody poniard of destruction. Who can think without horror of the atro. cities perpetrated by the blacks of St. Domingo? The passions of hatred, malignity, and revenge, so long nurtured and concealed in the bosoms of degraded and dissembling men, bursting forth, spread abroad at once the tremendous havoc of murder and devastation. Such is the end of civilization. However slow may be its progress, and whatever course it may seem to pursue, this is its tremendous conclusion! It nourishes a volcano in its bosom. It places the ingredients, with chemical skill, deep in the bowels of society.Mountains may be heaped on mountains; but the slumbering fire can never be extinguished every age adds to its strength; and the longer the awful period is deferred, the more dreadful will be the explosion. Civilization is a forced state: it is not natural for one man to bend, cringe and creep to another. A noble spirit, a spirit that is inspired by the prond dignity of virtue, will bear every ev 1-sickness, pain, confinement, death-rather than have recourse to the mean arts of the sycophant; but, there are always those, who, willow like, will yield to the arrogant requisitions of adventitious superiority. There are always those who will kiss the rod of the tyrant, and bend the neck of submission to be trampled upon by the feet of the oppres sor. There are always those who will sacrifice the spirit of virtue to the low and sordid interests of the moment: who will practise every species of dissimulation which they conceive will advance their interests or gratify their propensities. But whenever the heavy hand of power is removed, the mind of the oppressed flies back with an elastic force, proportioned to the depth of its degradation, to occupy its original situation, and to tyrannize, in its turn, over those whom fortune has accidentally humbled. The appearances, therefore of servility, which are shown by indigent wretches to their opulent superiors, are almost always accompanied by hatred and envy in exact proportion to their pretended humility. What happiness can be expected in a state like this: where there is continual warfare be |