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minds in a day, to the religion of Nature, than the missions of folly, bigotry, and superstition would make in ages, to the metaphysical mysteries of intellectual idolatry, the cause of desolation and misery.

ARABIA.

THIS Country, comprehending a variety of nations, assimilates and identifies the moral character of its inhabitants, in relation to the Asiatic world, by the passion of avarice, and the mental quality of ingenuity, which operate to produce an universal spirit of commerce; and though the Arabs are governed by various forms of policy, this spirit of commerce pervades the whole, and receives more or less energy from the propinquity or distance of the sea. These moral qualities protect the mind from falling into the abyss of bigotry and superstition, in which its neighboring nations are plunged, and the force and pre-eminence of their ingenuity is proved beyond a doubt.

There is a tribe of wild Arabs, inhabiting the interior deserts of Arabia, where commerce furnishing but a contracted field for the display of this ingenuity, it has occupied its activity by approaching the province of wisdom, and has broken down the cobweb barrier that entangles savage and civilized nations in one common net. They have swept away the superstitious inventions of priestcraft, as enemies to truth and happiness, and adore the incomprehensibility of Nature in contemplation, but not in conception, and their penetrating ingenuity is too forcible to suffer a delusive definition and description, and marks the idea by a simple nomination in the word God.

Here then is a country, where the religion of Nature would prosper, and the first mission might select this as the centre of their circle of enlightened labors. Here the seed would find a congenial soil, and spread with rapid progress, as in the surrounding country, error lies on the surface, the earth would be free, and the roots of Nature would spread and acquire such strength, as would defy the resistance in the more distant soil of rooted error and prejudice, and would spread its branches of protection and happiness over all mankind.

PERSIA.

THIS Country presents a dreadful picture of the dire effect of ignorant self-love, or vice, to destroy the most advantageous gifts of indulgent Nature. The happiest climate and a productive soil are joined to great moral blessings. The natives of this country possess great force of mental faculty: their genius for poetry is as powerful, as it is eminent and singular among the nations of the East, and the mind has not only testified its force by descriptive ingenuity, but it has pushed back the bounds of human knowledge upon the province of wisdom, by its sentiments; but these, (as in the prince of poets, Pope,) are rather meteors of truth, that dart across the imagination, than the flame of wisdom, in conception, which presents a durable and effulgent light, and by explanation is conveyed to enlighten and edify the beholders.

The government of this country, if the bloody contention of usurpers, who occupy it no longer than the shouts of victory are heard from a triumphant army can be so called, is beyond all that history has recorded, or

imagination conceived-cruel, unjust, unstable, barbarous and desolatory. The tortures inflicted upon defeat. ed rivals, if related, would unhumanize a sympathetic mind, and congeal the circulation of blood, with the cold intensity of horror. The arbitrary seizure and destruction of the life and property of the individual, by the mushroom tyrants of Persia, suppress and corrupt all moral energy and affection, and the mind contracts itsel! with fear, like the frighted snail, that sacrifices all advantages of food and comfort derived from its expansion, and confounded by its excessive terror, dies in the limits of its shell.

With all the physical and moral means of happiness, this country is immersed in misery, O hasten benig nant, sympathetic and enlightened children of Nature, to disperse at least one spark of truth by means of books or missions. The mind of the inhabitant, from its qual ities, resembles tinder that would be fired by the smallest spark; and as the productions of their poets form the delight and instruction of all Asia, this country would be a luminary to the whole Eastern hemisphere.

INDIA.

THE moral qualities that may serve as a general identification of this extensive country are, sloth, cowardice and falsehood, which characterize its various and numerous inhabitants, though diversified by a multitude of religions, and subjugated all to the yoke of despotism.

Religious prejudices have a strong hold upon the minds of these people; not that the memory is replete with learned error, or the imagination corrupted with a perpetual contemplation of the same chimeras; but religious ceremonies being substituted for social virtues, the man who should be guilty of the least breach of the former, though he might observe the latter with more than human perfection, would be an irredeemable exile from society, and be reduced to a state of wretchedness, from which nothing but death could relieve him.

The sun of reason must shine with a heat emulating the natural sun in this climate, before it could dispel or. exhale such tenacious vapors of prejudice, condensed by custom, and preserved by terror.

European nations profiting by the divided state into which superstition reduces its votaries in this unhappy land, have, by means of commercial associations, let loose the monster avarice to plunder and subdue it.

They arrived in this country few in number, but being united by moral confidence, every European company of a few men became a giant, that trod down the dis persed natives who dared hostilely approach his steps, and as this confidence was the result of superior intelligence, the English nation, who possessed of all Europeans the most, have negotiated themselves, with arms in their hands, into the conquest of the most flourishing part of the Indian empire.

The victory of the English would have been the victory of humanity, if the damnable spirit of commerce had not directed the government of the conquered land.

The English, ignorant of the language, customs and tempers of the natives, found it impossible to govern what had required but little art to conquer. Empires containing the lives, properties and happiness of millions of human beings were put up to auction, and consigned over to the highest bidder, who was sure to be the greatest villain; villany being the only means of amassing riches in that country, [and in every other.]

This auction-inaugurated emperor called a renter, took possession of his purchased, but temporary kingdom, which he so rack-rented and tyrannized over, that till the end of his reign, or term of tenure, the value constantly diminished, and the abdicating emperor left beggared subjects to an avaricious and tyrannical successor; and the crown continued always in an auction dynastry, marked by those infernal passions.

The unfortunate subjects under their native lords had suffered much oppression, yet their complaints were heard, and this checked the avaricious violence they were often subject to from the collectors. But when they fell under the European yoke, the hope of complaint was lost, as the communication between the subject and sovereign was intercepted by interpreters, whose interest it was to perpetuate the ignorance of the latter, and the oppression of the former, by becoming the corrupted agents of the renters; and as the ignorance of Europeans in the languages of the country secured them from detection, their rapacity and corruption knew no bounds; and it is a political problem, difficult to solve-What has prevented the total devastation of that country under the system of auction sovereignty, which the ignorance of Europeans made necessary?

Europeans have, indeed, increased in knowledge of the languages, customs and tempers of the natives, but by no means in the ratio that the corruption of interpreters and agents have increased.

The employ of the East India Company's servants in that country, is an impeachment of the wisdom and virtue of the metropolitan government. The inferior grade

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