No More Learning

In these they not only
learn the history of their nation, and what they have to fear from the
strength and designs of their enemies, but they also imbibe the most
ardent spirit of war. The arts of stratagem are their study, and the
most athletic exercises of the field their employment and delight; and,
what is their greatest praise, they have magistrates "to put them to
shame. " They inflict no corporeal punishment on their countrymen, it is
true; but a reprimand from an elder, delivered in the assembly, is
esteemed by them a deeper degradation and severer punishment than any of
those too often most impolitically adopted by civilized nations. Yet,
though possessed of this advantage--an advantage impossible to exist in
a large commercial empire--and though masters of great martial policy,
their condition, upon the whole, is big with the most striking
demonstration of the misery and unnatural state of such very imperfect
civilization. "Multiply and replenish the earth" is an injunction of the
best political philosophy ever given to man. Nature has appointed man to
cultivate the earth, to increase in number by the food which its culture
gives, and by this increase of brethren to remove some, and to mitigate
all, the natural miseries of human life. But in direct opposition to
this is the political state of the wild aborigines of America. Their
lands, luxuriant in climate, are often desolate wastes, where thousands
of miles hardly support a few hundreds of savage hunters. Attachment to
their own tribe constitutes their highest idea of virtue; but this
virtue includes the most brutal depravity, makes them esteem the man of
every other tribe as an enemy, as one with whom nature had placed them
in a state of war, and had commanded to destroy. [24] And to this
principle their customs and ideas of honour serve as rituals and
ministers. The cruelties practised by the American savages on their
prisoners of war (and war is their chief employment) convey every idea
expressed by the word diabolical, and give a most shocking view of the
degradation of human nature. But what peculiarly completes the character
of the savage is his horrible superstition. In the most distant nations
the savage is, in this respect, the same. The terror of evil spirits
continually haunts him; his God is beheld as a relentless tyrant, and is
worshipped often with cruel rites, always with a heart full of horror
and fear. In all the numerous accounts of savage worship, one trace of
filial dependence is not to be found.
The very reverse of that happy
idea is the hell of the ignorant mind. Nor is this barbarism confined
alone to those ignorant tribes whom we call savages. The vulgar of every
country possess it in certain degrees, proportionated to their
opportunities of conversation with the more enlightened. Sordid
disposition and base ferocity, together with the most unhappy
superstition, are everywhere the proportionate attendants of ignorance
and severe want. And ignorance and want are only removed by intercourse
and the offices of society. So self-evident are these positions, that it
requires an apology for insisting upon them; but the apology is at hand.
He who has read knows how many eminent writers,[25] and he who has
conversed knows how many respectable names, connect the idea of
innocence and happiness with the life of the savage and the unimproved
rustic. To fix the character of the savage is therefore necessary, ere
we examine the assertion, that "it had been happy for both the old and
the new worlds if the East and West Indies had never been discovered. "
The bloodshed and the attendant miseries which the unparalleled rapine
and cruelties of the Spaniards spread over the new world, indeed
disgrace human nature. The great and flourishing empires of Mexico and
Peru, steeped in the blood of forty millions of their sons, present a
melancholy prospect, which must excite the indignation of every good
heart. Yet such desolation is not the certain consequence of discovery.
And, even should we allow that the depravity of human nature is so great
that the avarice of the merchant and rapacity of the soldier will
overwhelm with misery every new-discovered country, still, are there
other, more comprehensive views, to be taken, ere we decide against the
intercourse introduced by navigation. When we weigh the happiness of
Europe in the scale of political philosophy, we are not to confine our
eye to the dreadful ravages of Attila the Hun, or of Alaric the Goth. If
the waters of a stagnated lake are disturbed by the spade when led into
new channels, we ought not to inveigh against the alteration because the
waters are fouled at the first; we are to wait to see the streamlets
refine and spread beauty and utility through a thousand vales which they
never visited before. Such were the conquests of Alexander, temporary
evils, but civilization and happiness followed in the bloody track. And,
though disgraced with every barbarity, happiness has also followed the
conquests of the Spaniards in the other hemisphere.