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

In connexion 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."

§ 271. Of diversities and obliquities of moral judgment in connexion 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, dark

ened 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 favoured 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.

§ 272. 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.

§ 273. 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 wor

ship 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 clamours of parental affection; and in the belief that the will of their gods is paramount to every other claim, they consummate the act of unparalleled 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.

§ 274. 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 favour of the persons who have committed the crime suggest a thousand circumstances, which seem to us to alleviate its aggravation. We frame for them a multitude of plausible excuses, which we should not have thought of doing had it not been for the endearments and intercourse of our previous connexion.-Savage life also gives us an illustration of the views now expressed. Owing to the peculiar situation of those in that state, and the consequent early associations, a factitious and exaggerated importance is attached to mere courage; and gentleness, equanimity, and benevolence are, as virtues, proportionally depressed.

§ 275. Illustration of the principle of the preceding section. In an expedition to the Rocky Mountains, undertaken some years since by order of the Government of the United States, various interesting facts were ascertained concerning the Savage tribes through which the party passed. Among other things, it was ascertained that the Omawhaws, a tribe of some note, dwelling at that time a little distance from the river Missouri, are wanting in respectful regard to their old people, and that they look upon them as useless burdens to the community. When the aged go out on a hunting-party, or on warlike expeditions against an enemy, they are sometimes left under a hastilyerected shelter, and are thus permitted to perish after consuming the scanty stock of provisions with which they are furnished.

Here, in all probability, we see the influence of early associations. The Omawhaws are taught, even from the cradle, to attach their chief honour to active bravery, to feats in battle, and to achievements in hunting. And they transfer (as a Savage would be likely to do) the unquestionable discredit of moral and physical debility in the earlier periods of life to the

* Long's Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, vol. i., chs. x., xi.