Letter Thirteenth. BELOVED EL HASSAN, THANKS to the Goddess Serafwaty, thy friend ftill lives, to obferve the manners, and investigate the ideas of nations remote from his beloved Hinduftan. In fome of my former letters, I have delineated fome features of the modern philofophy. I met yesterday with a philofopher of this fchool, whofe fentiments were entirely novel to me. He was a grave man about forty years old, affected the character of a philofopher, and talked much in abftract and undefined language. I MET him walking alone upon the banks of the SCHUYLKILL. His appearance attracted my attention; and finding him courteous in his manners, I requested the pleasure of his fociety in a walk to and fro along the banks of the river. HE opened his remarks by an elaborate eulogium upon the progrefs of repub licanism; which word, as I afterwards found, means modern philofophy. "Thrones (faid he) are tottering; kings tremble at the progrefs of liberty; nobles and priests are confpiring, but in vain, to prop the altar and the throne. They must and they will fall, never to rife again. REPUBLICANISM has made a glorious progrefs in America. A philofopher and philanthropist is in the chair of fupreme magiftracy, and the minions of monarchy and aristocracy are skulking into private life. "BUT what (continued he) fignifies this, fo long as a diftempered and unnatural ftate of civilization, continues to corrupt the original innocence, and cramp the native freedom of man? I figh for the primitive state of nature, and confidently truft, that this century will fee it reftored. The earth, the great parent of man, beast, fowl and herb, has been wickedly appropriated to the use of individuals. Inftead of ranging at large over the ample face of nature, I am now forbidden to enter my neighbor's field, left I fhould tread down his grafs. I am confined by fences to a narrow road, and compelled to travel in a prescribed track." SIR, (rejoined I) do you not travel with infinitely more eafe in an established road, ufually the shortest distance between the places, which it connects, than you would over mountains and crags, and through moraffes, deferts and defiles? And does not the earth, when inclosed and cultivated, produce an hundred times more food, than when overrun by beasts of the foreft, and covered with heath and jungle? Does not a cultivated country alfo exhibit to the eye a landscape, beyond comparison more beautiful, than the barren wilderness of nature? "BUT, (faid the Philofopher,) this is no compenfation for the lofs of my liberty; the liberty of rambling juft where wild unheeding fancy leads. "HOW oppreffive is the whole fyftem of laws, by which this arbitrary affumption of property is defended. Why should my neighbor ride an elegant English courfer, breathing fire from his nostrils, and shaking the earth with his tread; while I, a better man than he, because a greater Philofopher, must travel on foot? and fhould I take his horfe for my own ufe, I must swing on the gallows, or toil in the mines. "KINGS, nobles and priefts, confpiring against the liberty of man, have enacted fyftems of laws, on purpose to entangle the unwary. There is no crime, where there is no law. A pure ftate of nature, where man is innocent, does not know a crime; because crimes have never been here created by the inftitution of laws. What, but a distempered civilization, has rendered it criminal to obey the dictates of nature in promifcuous concubinage? Why fhould I be confined to one woman, while the whole animal world befide, obey the impulse of paffion, and feek gratification, wherever it may be found? Why fhould I be compelled to fupport and educate those beings, whom my physical energies, operating ac cording to the established laws of nature, without the affiftance of mind, have produced? I am no more accountable for their existence, than the mountain for the cedar, which it bears, or the ftream for the wheel, which it turns. As therefore the cedar is cut down, and the mountain does not mourn; the wheel is removed, but the ftream ftill continues to flow ; fo thofe beings may be born, grow up, and die without any claim to my affiftance, and with no title to my love, or my grief." MR. Philofopher, rejoined I, your doctrines are new, and I muft therefore be indulged my doubts; as no one can at once eradicate established prejudices, or banish old modes of thinking. IF your neighbor's fuperior industry, or good fortune, enables him to ride an English courfer, while your indolence, or untoward fate, obliges you to walk, why fhould not laws be made to fecure to him the fruit of his industry, and the gifts of fortune? Your invectives against kings, |