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from vanity or interest, or themselves being deceived the event pretended to be foretold. It is more probby the limitedness of their views and their ignorance able that writings, pretending to divine inspiration, of natural causes: but where is the accredited case of God having come upon earth, to give the lie to his own creations? There would be something truly wonderful in the appearance of a ghost; but the assertion of a child that he saw one as he passed through the church-yard is universally admitted to be less miraculous.

should have been fabricated after the fulfilment of their pretended prediction, than that they should have really been divinely inspired; when we consider that the latter supposition makes God at once the creator of the human mind, and ignorant of its pri mary powers, particularly as we have numberless instances of false religions, and forged prophecies of things long past, and no accredited case of God haying conversed with men directly or indirectly. It is also possible that the description of an event might have foregone its occurrence; but this is far from being a legitimate proof of a divine revelation, as many men, not pretending to the character of a prophet, have nevertheless, in this sense, prophesied.

But even supposing that a man should raise a dead body to life before our eyes, and on this fact rest his claim to being considered the son of God;-the Humane Society restores drowned persons, and because it makes no mystery of the method it employs, its members are not mistaken for the sons of God. All that we have a right to infer from our ignorance of the cause of any event is, that we do not know it: Lord Chesterfield was never taken for a prophet, had the Mexicans attended to this simple rule when even by a bishop, yet he uttered this remarkable they heard the cannon of the Spaniards, they would prediction: “The despotic government of France is not have considered them as gods: the experiments screwed up to the highest pitch; a revolution is fast of modern chemistry would have defied the wisest approaching; that revolution, I am convinced, will philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome to have be radical and sanguinary." This appeared in the accounted for them on natural principles. An author letters of the prophet long before the accomplishment of strong common sense has observed, that " a miracle of this wonderful prediction. Now, have these paris no miracle at second-hand;" he might have added, ticulars come to pass, or have they not? If they have, that a miracle is no miracle in any case; for until we are acquainted with all natural causes, we have no reason to imagine others.

how could the Earl have foreknown them without inspiration? If we admit the truth of the Christian religion on testimony such as this, we must admit, on the same strength of evidence, that God has affixed the highest rewards to belief, and the eternal tortures of the never-dying worm to disbelief; both of which have been demonstrated to be involuntary.

for its reception by a submissive perusal of his word. Persons convinced in this manner, can do any thing but account for their conviction, describe the time at which it happened, or the manner in which it came upon them. It is supposed to enter the mind by other channels than those of the senses, and therefore professes to be superior to reason founded on their experience.

There remains to be considered another proof of Christianity-Prophecy. A book is written before a certain event, in which this event is foretold; how could the prophet have foreknown it without inspiration? how could he have been inspired without The last proof of the Christian religion depends God? The greatest stress is laid on the prophecies of on the influence of the Holy Ghost. Theologians Moses and Hosea on the dispersion of the Jews, and divide the influence of the Holy Ghost into its ordithat of Isaiah concerning the coming of the Messiah. nary and extraordinary modes of operation. The The prophecy of Moses is a collection of every pos- latter is supposed to be that which inspired the sible cursing and blessing; and it is so far from being Prophets and Apostles; and the former to be the marvellous that the one of dispersion should have grace of God, which summarily makes known the been fulfilled, that it would have been more sur-truth of his revelation, to those whose mind is fitted prising if. out of all these, none should have taken effect. In Deuteronomy, chap. xxviii. ver. 64, where Moses explicitly foretells the dispersion, he states that they shall there serve gods of wood and stone: “And the Lord shall scatter thee among all people, from the one end of the earth even to the other, and there thou shalt serve other gods, which neither thou nor thy fathers have known, even gods of wood and stone." The Jews are at this day remarkably tenacious of Admitting, however, the usefulness or possibility their religion. Moses also declares that they shall of a divine revelation, unless we demolish the founbe subjected to these causes for disobedience to his dations of all human knowledge, it is requisite that ritual: "And it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not our reason should previously demonstrate its genuhearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to ob- ineness; for, before we extinguish the steady ray of serve to do all the commandments and statutes which reason and common sense, it is fit that we should disI command you this day, that all these curses shall cover whether we can do without their assistance, come upon thee and overtake thee." Is this the real whether or no there be any other which may suffice reason? The third, fourth and fifth chapters of Hosea to guide us through the labyrinth of life:* for, if a are a piece of immodest confession. The indelicate man is to be inspired upon all occasions, if he is to type might apply in a hundred senses to a hundred be sure of a thing because he is sure, if the ordinary things. The fifty-third chapter of Isaiah is more operations of the spirit are not to be considered very explicit, yet it does not exceed in clearness the oracles extraordinary modes of demonstration, if enthusiasm of Delphos. The historical proof, that Moses, Isaiah is to usurp the place of proof, and madness that of and Hosea did write when they are said to have written, is far from being clear and circumstantial.

sanity, all reasoning is superfluous. The Mahometan dies fighting for his prophet, the Indian immolates himself at the chariot-wheels of Brahma, the Hottentot worships an insect, the Negro a bunch of fea

But prophecy requires proof in its character as a miracle; we have no right to suppose that a man foreknew future events from God, until it is demonstrated that he neither could know them by his own exertions, nor that the writings which contain the prediction could possibly have been fabricated after iv. chap. xix. on Enthusiasm.

* See Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding, book

383

thers, the Mexican sacrifices human victims! Their degree of conviction must certainly be very strong; it cannot arise from conviction, it must from feelings, the reward of their prayers. If each of these should affirm, in opposition to the strongest possible arguments, that inspiration carried internal evidence, I fear their inspired brethren, the orthodox Missionaries, would be so uncharitable as to pronounce them obstinate.

Miracles cannot be received as testimonies of a disputed fact, because all human testimony has ever been insufficient to establish the possibility of miracles. That which is incapable of proof itself, is no proof of any thing else. Prophecy has also been rejected by the test of reason. Those, then, who have been actually inspired, are the only true beievers in the Christian religion.

Mox numine viso

Virginei tumuere sinus, innuptaque mater
Arcano stupuit compleri viscera partu
Auctorem peritura suum. Mortalia corda
Artificem texere poli, latuitque sub uno
Pectore, qui totum late complectitur orbem.

CLAUDIAM, Carmen Paschali.

Does not so monstrous and disgusting an absurdity carry its own infamy and refutation with itself?

Note 16, page 120, col. 2.

Him (still from hope to hope the bliss pursuing.
Which, from the exhaustless lore of human weal
Dawr on the virtuous mind), the thoughts that rise
In time-destroying infiniteness, gift
With self-enshrined eternity, etc.

Dark flood of time!

Roll as it listeth thee-I measure not
By months or moments, thy ambiguous course.
Another may stand by me on the brink,
And watch the bubble whirl'd beyond his ken
That pauses at my feet. The sense of love,
The thirst for action, and the impassion'd thought,
Prolong my being: if I wake no more,

My life more actual living will contain
Than some gray veteran's of the world's cold school,
Whose listless hours unprofitably roll,
By one enthusiast feeling unredeem'd,

See GODWIN'S Pol. Jus. vol. i. page 411-and
Condorcet, Esquisse d'un Tableau Historique des
Progrès de l'Esprit Humain, Epoque ix.

Note 17, page 120, col. 2.

No longer now

He slays the lamb that looks him in the face.

flowed from unnatural diet. Milton was so well aware of this, that he makes Raphael thus exhibit to Adam the consequence of his disobedience.

-Immediately a place

I hold that the depravity of the physical and moral nature of man originated in his unnatural habits of life. The origin of man, like that of the universe of which he is a part, is enveloped in impenetrable mystery. His generations either had a beginning, or they had not. The weight of evidence in favor of each of these suppositions seems tolerably equal; and it is perfectly unimportant, to the present argument, which is assumed. The language spoken however by the mythology of nearly all religions seems to prove, that at some distant period man forsook the path of nature, and sacrificed the purity and happiness of his being to unnatural appetites. The date of this event seems to have also been that of some great change in the climates of the earth, with which it has an obvious correspondence. The allegory of Adam and Eve eating of the tree of evil, Time is our consciousness of the succession of and entailing upon their posterity the wrath of God, ideas in our mind. Vivid sensation, of either pain and the loss of everlasting life, admits of no other or pleasure, makes the time seem long, as the com-explanation than the disease and crime that have mon phrase is, because it renders us more acutely conscious of our ideas. If a mind be conscious of a hundred ideas during one minute, by the clock, and of two hundred during another, the latter of these spaces would actually occupy so much greater extent in the mind as two exceed one in quantity. If, therefore, the human mind, by any future improvement of its sensibility, should become conscious of an infinite number of ideas in a minute, that minute would be eternity. I do not hence infer that the actual space between the birth and death of a man will ever be prolonged; but that his sensibility is perfectible, and that the number of ideas which his! mind is capable of receiving is indefinite. One man is stretched on the rack during twelve hours; another sleeps soundly in his bed: the difference of time perceived by these two persons is immense; one hardly will believe that half an hour has elapsed, The story of Prometheus is one likewise which, the other could credit that centuries had flown dur- although universally admitted to be allegorical has ing his agony. Thus, the life of a man of virtue never been satisfactory explained. Prometheus stole and talent who should die in his thirtieth year, is, fire from heaven, and was chained for this crime to with regard to his own feelings, longer than that of Mount Caucasus, where a vulture continually dea miserable priest-ridden slave, who dreams out a voured his liver, that grew to meet its hunger. Hecentury of dullness. The one has perpetually cul- siod says, that, before the time of Prometheus, mantivated his mental faculties, has rendered himself kind were exempt from suffering; that they enjoyed master of his thoughts, can abstract and generalize a vigorous youth, and that death, when at length it amid the lethargy of every-day business;-the other came, approached like sleep. and gently closed their can slumber over the brightest moments of his being, eyes. Again, so general was this opinion, that Horace, and is unable to remember the happiest hour of his a poet of the Augustan age, writeslife. Perhaps the perishing ephemeron enjoys a longer life than the tortoise.

Before his eyes appear'd: sad, noisome, dark:
A lazar house it seem'd; wherein were laid
Numbers of all diseased; all maladies

Of ghastly spasm, or racking torture, qualms
Of heart-sick agony, all feverous kinds,
Convulsions, epilepsies, fierce catarrhs,
Intestine stone, and ulcer, cholic pangs,
Dæmoniac frenzy, moping melancholy,
And moon-struck madness, pining atrophy,
Marasmus and wide-wasting pestilence,
Dropsies, and asthmas, and joint-racking rheums.
And how many thousands more might not be
added to this frightful catalogue!

Audax omnia perpeti,
Gens humana ruit per vetitum nefas;

Audax Iapeti genus
Ignem fraude mala gentibus intulit:
Post ignem ætheria domo
Subductum, macies et nova febrium
Terris incubuit cohors,
Semotique prius tarda necessitas
Lethi corripuit gradum.

communicate his sensations, raised him above the level of his fellow animals. But the steps that have been taken are irrevocable. The whole of human science is comprised in one question:-How can the advantages of intellect and civilization be reconciled with the liberty and pure pleasures of natural life? How can we take the benefits, and reject the evils How plain a language is spoken by all this! Prome- of the system, which is now interwoven with all the theus (who represents the human race) effected some fibres of our being?—I believe that abstinence from great change in the condition of his nature, and ap- animal food and spirituous liquors would in a great plied fire to culinary purposes; thus inventing an ex-measure capacitate us for the solution of this importpedient for screening from his disgust the horrors of ant question.

the shambles. From this moment his vitals were It is true, that mental and bodily derangement is devoured by the vulture of disease. It consumed attributable in part to other deviations from rectitude his being in every shape of its lothesome and infinite and nature than those which concern diet. The misvariety, inducing the soul-quelling sinkings of prema- takes cherished by society respecting the connexion ture and violent death. All vice arose from the ruin of the sexes, whence the misery and diseases of unof healthful innocence. Tyranny, superstition, com- satisfied celibacy, unenjoying prostitution, and the merce, and inequality, were then first known, when premature arrival of puberty, necessarily spring; the reason vainly attempted to guide the wanderings of putrid atmosphere of crowded cities; the exhalations exacerbated passion. I conclude this part of the of chemical processes; the muffling of our bodies in subject with an extract from Mr. Newton's Defence superfluous apparel; the absurd treatment of infants: of Vegetable Regimen, from whom I have borrowed all these, and innumerable other causes, contribute this interpretation of the fable of Prometheus. their mite to the mass of human evil.

It is

"Making allowance for such transposition of the Comparative anatomy teaches us that man resemevents of the allegory as time might produce after bles frugivorous animals in every thing, and carnivorthe important truths were forgotten, which this por- ous in nothing; he has neither claws wherewith to tion of the ancient mythology was intended to trans- seize his prey, nor distinct and pointed teeth to tear mit, the drift of the fable seems to be this:-Man at the living fibre. A Mandarin of the first class, with his creation was endowed with the gift of perpetual nails two inches long, would probably find them alone youth; that is, he was not formed to be a sickly suf- inefficient to hold even a hare. After every subterfering creature as we now see him, but to enjoy fuge of gluttony, the bull must be degraded into the health, and to sink by slow degrees into the bosom ox, and the ram into the wether, by an unnatural of his parent earth, without disease or pain. Prome- and inhuman operation, that the flaccid fibre may theus first taught the use of animal food (primus offer a fainter resistance to rebellious nature. bovem occidit Prometheus*) and of fire, with which only by softening and disguising dead flesh by culito render it more digestible and pleasing to the taste. nary preparation, that it is rendered susceptible of Jupiter, and the rest of the gods, foreseeing the con- mastication or digestion; and that the sight of its sequences of these inventions, were amused or irri- bloody juices and raw horror does not excite intolertated at the short-sighted devices of the newly-formed able lothing and disgust. Let the advocate of animal creature, and left him to experience the sad effects food force himself to a decisive experiment on its of them. Thirst, the necessary concomitant of a fitness, and, as Plutarch recommends, tear a living flesh diet," (perhaps of all diet vitiated by culinary preparation,) "ensued; water was resorted to, and man forfeited the inestimable gift of health which he had received from Heaven: he became diseased, the partaker of a precarious existence, and no longer descended slowly to his grave."+

But just disease to luxury succeeds,

And every death its own avenger breeds;
The fury passions from that blood began,
. And turn'd on man a fiercer savage-man.

lamb with his teeth, and plunging his head into its vitals, slake his thirst with the streaming blood; when fresh from the deed of horror, let him revert to the irresistible instincts of nature that would rise in judg ment against it, and say, Nature formed me for such work as this. Then, and then only, would he be consistent.

Man resembles no carnivorous animal. There is no exception, unless man be one, to the rule of herbivorous animals having cellulated colons.

The orang-outang perfectly resembles man both Man, and the animals whom he has infected with in the order and number of his teeth. The orangnis society, or depraved by his dominion, are alone outang is the most anthropomorphous of the ape tribe, diseased. The wild hog, the mouflon, the bison, and all of which are strictly frugivorous. There is no the wolf, are perfectly exempt from malady, and in- other species of animals, which live on different food, variably die either from external violence, or natural in which this analogy exists. In many frugivorous old age. But the domestic hog, the sheep, the cow, animals, the canine teeth are more pointed and disand the dog, are subject to an incredible variety of tinct than those of man. The resemblance also of distempers; and, like the corrupters of their nature, the human stomach to that of the orang-outang, is have physicians who thrive upon their miseries. The greater than to that of any other animal. supereminence of man is like Satan's, a superemi- The intestines are also identical with those of hernence of pain; and the majority of his species, bivorous animals, which present a larger surface for doomed to penury, disease, and crime, have reason to absorption, and have ample and cellulated colons. curse the untoward event, that by enabling him to The cœcum also, though short, is larger than that of

Plin. Nat. Hist., lib. vii. sect. 57.
Return to Nature. Cadell, 1811.

Cuvier, Leçons d'Anat. Comp. tom. iii. page 169, 373, 448, 465, 480. Rees's Cyclopædia, article MAN.

carnivorous animals; and even here the orang-outang eyes, and swollen veins, that alone can grasp the retains its accustomed similarity. knife of murder. The system of a simple diet promThe structure of the human frame then is that of ises no Utopian advantages. It is no mere reform of one fitted to a pure vegetable diet, in every essential legislation, whilst the furious passions and evil proparticular. It is true, that the reluctance to abstain pensities of the human heart, in which it had its from animal food, in those who have been long ac- origin, are still unassuaged. It strikes at the root of customed to its stimulus, is so great in some persons all evil, and is an experiment which may be tried of weak minds, as to be scarcely overcome; but this with success, not alone by nations, but by small sois far from bringing any argument in its favor. A cieties, families, and even individuals. In no case

lamb, which was fed for some time on flesh by a has a return to vegetable diet produced the slightest ship's crew, refused its natural diet at the end of the injury; in most it has been attended with changes voyage. There are numerous instances of horses, undeniably beneficial. Should ever a physician be sheep, oxen, and even wood-pigeons, having been born with the genius of Locke, I am persuaded that taught to live upon flesh, until they have lothed their he might trace all bodily and mental derangements natural aliment. Young children evidently prefer to our unnatural habits, as clearly as that philosopher pastry, oranges, apples, and other fruit, to the flesh has traced all knowledge to sensation. What prolific of animals; until, by the gradual depravation of the sources of disease are not those mineral and vegetadigestive organs, the free use of vegetables has for a ble poisons that have been introduced for its extirpatime produced scrious inconveniences; for a time, I tion! How many thousands have become murderers say, since there never was an instance wherein a and robbers, bigots and domestic tyrants, dissolute change from spirituous liquors and animal food to and abandoned adventurers, from the use of fervegetables and pure water, has failed ultimately to mented liquors! who, had they slaked their thirst invigorate the body, by rendering its juices bland only with pure water, would have lived but to dif and consentaneous, and to restore to the mind that fuse the happiness of their own unperverted feelings. cheerfulness and elasticity, which not one in fifty How many groundless opinions and absurd institutions possesses on the present system. A love of strong have not received a general sanction from the sotliquors is also with difficulty taught to infants. Al- tishness and intemperance of individuals! Who will most every one remembers the wry faces which the assert that, had the populace of Paris satisfied their first glass of port produced. Unsophisticated instinct hunger at the ever-furnished table of vegetable is invariably unerring; but to decide on the fitness nature, they would have lent their brutal suffrage to of animal food, from the perverted appetites which the proscription-list of Robespierre? Could a set of its constrained adoption produces, is to make the criminal a judge in his own cause: it is even worse, it is appealing to the infatuated drunkard in a question of the salubrity of brandy.

men, whose passions were not perverted by unnatural stimuli, look with coolness on an auto da fè? Is it to be believed that a being of gentle feelings, rising from his meal of roots, would take delight in What is the cause of morbid action in the animal sports of blood? Was Nero a man of temperate system? Not the air we breathe, for our fellow-deni- life? could you read calm health in his cheek, flushed zens of nature breathe the same uninjured; not the with ungovernable propensities of hatred for the water we drink, (if remote from the pollutions of human race? Did Muley Ismael's pulse beat evenly, man and his inventions,*) for the animals drink it too; was his skin transparent, did his eyes beam with not the earth we tread upon; not the unobscured healthfulness, and its invariable concomitants, cheersight of glorious nature, in the wood, the field, or the fulness and benignity? Though history has decided expanse of sky and ocean; nothing that we are or none of these questions, a child could not hesitate to do in common with the undiseased inhabitants of the answer in the negative. Surely the bile-suffused forest. Something then wherein we differ from them: cheek of Bonaparte, his wrinkled brow, and yellow our habit of altering our food by fire, so that our ap-eye, the ceaseless inquietude of his nervous system, petite is no longer a just criterion for the fitness of its speak no less plainly the character of his unresting gratification. Except in children, there remain no ambition than his murders and his victories. It is traces of that instinct which determines, in all other impossible, had Bonaparte descended from a race of animals, what aliment is natural or otherwise; and vegetable feeders, that he could have had either the so perfectly obliterated are they in the reasoning adults of our species, that it has become necessary to urge considerations drawn from comparative anatomy to prove that we are naturally frugivorous.

inclination or the power to ascend the throne of the Bourbons. The desire of tyranny could scarcely be excited in the individual, the power to tyrannize would certainly not be delegated by a society neither Crime is madness. Madness is disease. Whenever frenzied by inebriation nor rendered impotent and the cause of disease shall be discovered, the root, irrational by disease. Pregnant indeed with inexfrom which all vice and misery have so long over- haustible calamity is the renunciation of instinct, as shadowed the globe, will lie bare to the ax. All the it concerns our physical nature; arithmetic cannot exertions of man, from that moment, may be consid- enumerate, nor reason perhaps suspect, the multituered as tending to the clear profit of his species. No dinous sources of disease in civilized life. Even sane mind in a sane body resolves upon a real common water, that apparently innoxious pabulum crime. It is a man of violent passions, blood-shot when corrupted by the filth of populous cities, is a deadly and insidious destroyer.* Who can wonder that all the inducements held out by God himself in *The necessity of resorting to some means of purifying water, and the disease which arises from its adulteration the Bible to virtue should have been vainer than a in civilized countries, is sufficiently apparent.-See Dr. nurse's tale; and that those dogmas, by which he has LAMBE's Reports on Cancer. I do not assert that the use there excited and justified the most ferocious propen. of water is in itself unnatural, but that the unperverted palate would swallow no liquid capable of occasioning

disease.

* Lambe's Reports on Cancer.

sities, should have alone been deemed essential; it is scarcely possible that abstinence from aliments whilst Christians are in the daily practice of all those demonstrably pernicious should not become univerhabits, which have infected with disease and crime, sal. In proportion to the number of proselytes, so not only the reprobate sons, but those favored chil- will be the weight of evidence; and when a thoudren of the common Father's love? Omnipotence sand persons can be produced, living on vegetables itself could not save them from the consequences of and distilled water, who have to dread no disease but this original and universal sin.

old age, the world will be compelled to regard aniThere is no disease, bodily or mental, which adop- mal flesh and fermented liquors as slow but certain tion of vegetable diet and pure water has not infalli- poisons. The change which would be produced by bly mitigated, wherever the experiment has been simpler habits on political economy is sufficiently refairly tried. Debility is gradually converted into markable. The monopolizing eater of animal flesh strength, disease into healthfulness; madness, in all would no longer destroy his constitution by devouring its hideous variety, from the ravings of the fettered an acre at a meal, and many loaves of bread would maniac, to the unaccountable irrationalities of ill cease to contribute to gout, madness and apoplexy, temper, that make a hell of domestic life, into a calm in the shape of a pint of porter, or a dram of gin, and considerate evenness of temper, that alone might when appeasing the long-protracted famine of the offer a certain pledge of the future moral reformation hard-working peasant's hungry babes. The quantity of of society. On a natural system of diet, old age nutritious vegetable matter, consumed in fattening the would be our last and our only malady; the term of carcass of an ox, would afford ten times the sustenance, our existence would be protracted; we should enjoy undepraving indeed, and incapable of generating dislife, and no longer preclude others from the enjoy-ease, if gathered immediately from the bosom of the ment of it; all sensational delights would be infi- earth. The most fertile districts of the habitable globe nitely more exquisite and perfect; the very sense of are now actually cultivated by men for animals, at a being would then be a continued pleasure, such as delay and waste of aliment absolutely incapable of we now feel it in some few and favored moments of calculation. It is only the wealthy that can, to any our youth. By all that is sacred in our hopes for great degree, even now, indulge the unnatural crathe human race, I conjure those who love happiness ving for dead flesh, and they pay for the greater and truth, to give a fair trial to the vegetable system. license of the privilege by subjection to supernuReasoning is surely superfluous on a subject whose merary diseases. Again, the spirit of the nation that merits an experience of six months would set for should take the lead in this great reform, would inever at rest. But it is only among the enlightened sensibly become agricultural; commerce, with all its and benevolent that so great a sacrifice of appetite vice, selfishness and corruption, would gradually deand prejudice can be expected, even though its ulti-cline; more natural habits would produce gentler mate excellence should not admit of dispute. It is manners, and the excessive complication of political found easier, by the short-sighted victims of disease, relations would be so far simplified, that every indito palliate their torments by medicine, than to pre-vidual might feel and understand why he loved his vent them by regimen. The vulgar of all ranks are in-country, and took a personal interest in its welfare. variably sensual and indocile; yet I cannot but feel How would England, for example, depend on the myself persuaded, that when the benefits of vegeta- caprices of foreign rulers, if she contained within ble diet are mathematically proved; when it is as herself all the necessaries and despised whatever clear, that those who live naturally are exempt they possessed of the luxuries of life? How could from premature death, as that nine is not one, the they starve her into compliance with their views? most sottish of mankind will feel a preference to- Of what consequence would it be that they refused wards a long and tranquil, contrasted with a short and to take her woollen manufactures, when large and painful life. On an average, out of sixty persons, fertile tracts of the island ceased to be allotted to the four die in three years. Hopes are entertained that, waste of pasturage? On a natural system of diet, we in April 1814, a statement will be given, that sixty should require no spices from India; no wines from persons, all having lived more than three years on Portugal, Spain, France, or Madeira; none of those vegetables and pure water, are then in perfect health. multitudinous articles of luxury, for which every More than two years have now elapsed; not one of corner of the globe is rifled, and which are the causes them has died; no such example will be found in any of so much individual rivalship, such calamitous and sixty persons taken at random. Seventeen persons sanguinary national disputes. In the history of modof all ages (the families of Dr. Lamb and Mr. New-ern times, the avarice of commercial monopoly, no ton) have lived for seven years on this diet without less than the ambition of weak and wicked chiefs, a death, and almost without the slightest illness. Sure- seems to have fomented the universal discord, to ly, when we consider that some of these were infants, have added stubbornness to the mistakes of cabinets, and one a martyr to asthma now nearly subdued, we and indocility to the infatuation of the people. Let may challenge any seventeen persons taken at ran- it ever be remembered, that it is the direct influence dom in this city to exhibit a parallel case. Those of commerce to make the interval between the richwho have been excited to question the rectitude of est and the poorest man wider and more unconquerestablished habits of diet, by these loose remarks, able. Let it be remembered, that it is a foe to every should consult Mr. Newton's luminous and eloquent thing of real worth and excellence in the human essay.* character. The odious and disgusting aristocracy of wealth is built upon the ruins of all that is good in chivalry or republicanism; and luxury is the forerunner of a barbarism scarce capable of cure. Is it impossible to realize a state of society, where all the "Return to Nature, or Defence of Vegetable Regimen." energies of man shall be directed to the production of his solid happiness? Certainly, if this advantage

When these proofs come fairly before the world, and are clearly seen by all who understand arithmetic,

Cadell, 1811.

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