or not hinder." In another place he says, in explanation of their conduct," they thought they had a right to every thing they could lay their hands on." We learn also, that, after they were made to understand the English notions of property and the penalty attached to a violation of it, they soon laid aside such conduct. It is obvious, if they had attached the same ideas to taking property, which we attach to stealing, they would not have taken it openly, as much so as if they supposed they either had a right to it, or that the owners would not resent or hinder their taking it.

§. 270. This view of the subject further illustrated from cases of assassination.

It would be easy to introduce other illustrations, which would seem properly to come under this head. For instance, there is no crime, in respect to the enormity of which the opinion of mankind is more decided and unanimous, than that of assassination. But the objector to the doctrine of an original moral sense assures us, that about two centuries ago assassinations were frequent in Scotland; and that they appeared to be committed without any symptoms of compunction. A state of things, which is sometimes alledged to be inconsistent with an implanted and universal moral nature.

As to the fact of the frequency of assassinations at that period, and of their being perpetrated with but little remorse, there can be no doubt. But before we can properly pronounce this state of things to be inconsistent with a moral nature, we ought to inquire into the civil and political condition of the country. It appears from Dr. Robertson, that the power of the Scottish princes was at that time limited; so much so that an attempt to punish the crimes of a chieftain, or even of his vassals, often excited rebellions and civil wars; and that, as a general thing, the administration of justice was extremely feeble and dilatory. "Under a gov

ernment so feeble, (he adds,) men assumed, as in a state of nature, the right of judging and redressing their own wrongs." There seems to have been a practical abandonment of all just public authority; and each man was in a great degree left, in the protection of his person and rights, to his own efforts. Under such circumstances might we not

reasonably expect, that assassinations would be frequent Was not this state of things essentially a mere transfer of the right of Capital Punishment, which was then universal ly supposed to exist, from the hands of the magistrate to the hands of individuals? If the right of taking life was ac knowledged to be possessed by magistrates, might not private individuals naturally be led to suppose, that the same right, in extreme cases, devolved upon them, when the magistrate failed to afford protection? And furthermore, if this condi

tion of things, dreadful as it undoubtedly was, proves, that the Scotch people were by nature destitute of a moral sense then, does it not follow, that they have no moral sense, no conscience now?

§. 271. Reference to a cruel law of the Athenians.

In connection with the view of the subject, which is now before us, we ask the attention of the reader to a single instance more. At one period of the history of Athens, it was decreed, that when the city was besieged, all the useless people should be put to death. This, (says Montesquieu,) was an abominable political law, in consequence of an abominable law of nations. Among the Greeks the inhabitants of a town taken, lost their civil liberty, and were sold as slaves. The taking of a town implied its entire destruction; which is the source not only of those obstinate defences, and of those unnatural actions, but likewise of those shocking laws which they sometimes enacted."

§. 272. Of diversities and obliquities of moral judgment in connection with speculative opinions.

Furthermore, we may reasonably expect, in the fourth place, that there will be diversities of moral judgment, based upon diversities in important speculative opinions in morals, politics, and religion, and in truth upon almost any subject.

-Some years since the speculative opinion seems to have been prevalent through nearly the whole of the civilized world, that the Negroes were an inferior race, located in the graduation of rank somewhere between the brute animals and man. This was the speculative belief. And what has been the consequence? The fires of desolation have been

kindled upon the coast of Africa; villages and towns have been destroyed; a continual war has been kept up among the native tribes; and probably forty millions of persons have been torn away from their native country, and consigned to perpetual slavery.

While this erroneous speculative opinion held possession, to a considerable extent, of the minds of men, the authority of conscience was paralyzed; her voice, if it was heard at all, was feeble, and scarcely excited notice. And why should it be otherwise? If the Negroes are truly an inferior race to white men, darkened in intellect and imbruted in the affections, incapable of taking care of themselves and still more of any intellectual and social advancement, what harm is there in bringing them into vassalage, and making them grind, like the brute animals to which they are so nearly related, in the prison-house of the more favored species? The difficulty is not so much with the conscience as with the erroneous opinion.

We learn from the Memoirs of the Rev. John Newton of England, a man as much distinguished for his piety as for his intelligence and eloquence, that he was for some years personally engaged in the Slave Trade; and that too, after he had professed, and to all appearance with great sincerity, to be guided by the principles of the Christian religion. Such were the prevalent notions in regard to the blacks, that the traffic does not appear to have occurred to him as being morally wrong. He expressly says. "During the time I was engaged in the Slave Trade, I never had the least scruple of its lawfulness." He pursued it without any of those compunctious visitings, which could not fail to have troubled him, if he had regarded them, as surely they ought to be regarded, as children of the same common parent, and as participators, in the view of unprejudiced justice, in the same common inheritance of natural rights. But at the present time, owing to the meritorious exertions of such men as Clarkson and Wilberforce, and the general progress of just and liberal sentiments, the speculative opinion is in a great degree demolished; the black man stands forth in the eye of philosophy and religion as our brother; and he, who engages in this nefarious traffic, is branded as an outlaw and a pirate.

§. 273. Further illustrations of the influence of wrong speculative opinions.

The speculative opinion has formerly existed very extensively, and does still to some degree, that the civil authority has a right, in relation to its own subjects, to exact conformity in the matters of religion. And the result has been, that thousands and hundreds of thousands, at various times and in different countries, have been subjected to imprisonment, the torture, exile, and death. And those, who have been the leading agents in these horrible transactions, from an unconverted Saul of Tarsus down to the Lauds and Bonners of later times, have perpetrated them, in their own estimation, with washed hands and a pure heart. They have gone from the Oratory to the dungeon of the Inquisition; they have, with unquestionable sincerity, looked up to heaven for a blessing, as they have applied to their mangled victims the screw and the wheel of torture; they have arisen from the knee of supplication to kindle with a pious haste the fires of Smithfield, and to wield the exterminating sword of the St. Bartholomew. They have done all this, merely in consequence of entertaining a wrong speculative opinion, conscientiously.

§. 274. Of the effect of wrong speculative opinions among heathen tribes. And if such are the effects of wrong speculative opinions in civilized and Christian lands, what can we reasonably expect will be the result of erroneous opinions in lands which are neither Christian nor civilized! "If they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry ?"It is a truth of universal application, that a wrong intellect will make a wrong conscience, because it is the nature, (and, although it sometimes suffers under the application of its own principles, yet on the whole it is the excellence and glory of its nature) that it acts in conformity with the intellectual perception.

It is said that Indian mothers on the banks of the Ganges sometimes throw their children into the sacred stream. Is this a proof, that they are by nature destitute of the natural affections? Certainly not. Nor is it a proof, that they are naturally destitute of a conscience. The whole is probably the result of a wrong speculative opinion, viz. that the gods

whom they worship are in some cases propitiated by these precious sacrifices, and require them to be made. Under these circumstances, they hush, with a fortitude worthy of a better cause, the clamors of parental affection; and in the belief, that the will of their gods is paramount to every other claim, they consummate the act of unparallelled cruelty with scarce a whisper of internal condemnation.

It is on the ground also of a false speculative opinion of a similar kind, that we are probably to account for the system of self-torture, such as falling on spikes of iron, dancing with bamboos thrust through the sides, and swinging on hooks, which is to this day so prevalent in some Eastern nations. Conscience naturally condemns any uncalled for injury to our persons, and all infliction of unnecessary suffering; but when it is a part of men's settled speculative belief, that the will of the gods imposes such suffering and exacts such injury, conscience, acting in conformity with the principles of its own nature, necessarily approves.

§. 275. Influence of early associations on moral judgments.

Our moral judgments, in the fifth place, are sometimes perplexed and led in a direction different from what they would otherwise be, by means of early associations.-The principle of association does not operate upon the moral capacity directly; it operates indirectly, with considerable influence. When a particular action is to be judged of, it calls up, in the mind of different individuals, different and distinct series of accessory circumstances. It has the effect to place the thing, intellectually considered, in a different position. This difference in the tendencies of the associating principle can hardly fail to have considerable effect in modifying the sentiment of approbation or disapprobation, resulting from the consideration of any particular action.

Accordingly when vices are committed by near friends, by a brother, or a parent, although they fill us with the deepest grief, it is frequently the case, that they do not excite within us such abhorrence of the actual guilt, as we should be likely to feel in other cases. Our prepossessions in favor of the persons, who have committed the crime, suggest a thousand circumstances, which seem to us to alleviate its aggravation.