we were not disposed to concern ourself with any of those great matters which agitate the civilized world; and that we were an unambitious unaspiring mortal, content with ease and tranquillity. Our friend said he perceived that we were headstrong in our folly, and therefore he would leave us to our contemplations: and so he did.

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 federalist.

If by republicanism be meant a strict adherence to those principles which promote the public weal, we are a republican.

I

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 distinction 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 discover 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 vengeful 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 timeserving populace. Like a mighty torrent, long confined by impassable barriers, they burst forth at once, and overwhelmed the fair fields 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 neverdying ferocity. Those whom yesterday they adored, today were the objects of their unrelenting fury. Over those to whom yesterday they cringed as obedient slaves, they brandished, to-day, the bloody poinard of destruction.

Who can think without horror of the atrocities 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 proud dignity of virtue, will bear every evil-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 oppressor. 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 between the superior and inferior members of the community? and where the debased party, disappointed in their wish of hurling threats of defiance into the faces of their oppressors, vent their malignity against each other?

Let us illustrate this subject by referring to the affairs of a well known people.

The Jews, for many centuries, wore the shackles of servitude. They were oppressed by the Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans. They had long been accounted a proud stiffnecked and arrogant nation. They rebelled against all their successive masters, and fought with, what we suppose you would call, savage ferocity against their oppressors; but, being continually subdued, we find them at last sunk into a state of abject servility. They flattered the pride of the conquerors of the world with every appearance of humility, and proclaimed to the world, "we will have no king but Cesar!"

Is it supposable that their hatred of the Romans was less at this time than it had been at any former period? Not at all: let the violence, rancor, and fury of their subsequent wars bear testimony of their immortal animosity. But that rage, which they could not spend on the heads of their oppressors, they directed against each other: and their sufferings and misfortunes are not to be paralleled in the history of any people.

Heroes, legislators, sages, reformers! what have ye done? You have been deified for the benefits, it was supposed, you had conferred on humanity. Behold the fruit of your labor! [To be continued.]

SERMONS.

THERE was a certain clergyman, in a neighboring state, who made choice of the following words for the theme of his discourse, "Thus saith the Lord, make this valley fully of ditches." He divided his subject into a convenient number of heads, and made a very learned and excellent discourse.

One of his auditors observed to him afterwards, in conversation, that he was amazed that the doctor should select such a portion of scripture for his text: it appearing, he thought to require a great deal of genius to deduce a suitable discourse from those words.

The doctor replied, "My dear sir, he must be a poor clergyman who cannot preach Christ from any text in the Bible." "Well doctor," replied the former, "how would you preach Christ from the iron bedstead of Og, kink of Bashan?" "Why," said the doctor, "the iron of the bedstead is a type of the hardness of your heart and the stiffness of your neck; the greatness of its size resembles the magnitude of your sins. It requires the power of Chirst to soften your heart and take away your manifold transgressions. The transition is easy and natural."

Now, however we may admire the ingenuity of preachers in making an excellent discourse from an unpromising text, we think they might often make a better selection than they do. We have often had occasion to remark that the orator passes over excellent maxims of morality in order to select a passage of scripture, which he conceives he can manage so as to draw certain inferences in favor of some contested point of doctrine, in which he supposes the honor of his sect is involved.

We would recommend it to any clergyman, who may be desirous of addressing an appropriate discourse to the youth of Philadelphia, to make a text of the following words:

"Thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor lay a stumblingblock before the -I am the Lord."

blind

These words are found recorded in the nineteenth chapter of the third book of Moses called Leviticus, and fourteenth verse. The discourse may be'divided into— but we are not disposed to write the sermon. Let the preacher divide it into as many heads as he may think proper. Let him expatiate upon each as long as he pleases; and then apply the whole as the Lord may enable him. He may draw as many inferences, as may seem "right in his eyes," in favor of abstruse and meta785153