LAPLAND.

THIS Country is situated at a northern extremity of the continent, with a soil so steril, that moss alone vegetates, and a climate so rude, that the circulation of the human blood is stopped by its rigorous cold. Here Liberty, exiled from every other part of the globe, seems to have retired, as to an only asylum. Here, after a reign of whose doubtful term history makes no mention, she was assaulted in her strong fortress, by the Russians, Danes, and Swedes, led on by haggard avarice, and the blind hag her associate, superstition, the one tempted by the furs of beasts, and the other to make beasts of ignorant men, to increase her domain of folly.

Nature led on the troops of Liberty, but the cunning treachery of her double-headed foe found means to corrupt them, and under the veil of commerce, for furs, exchanged spirituous liquor: this inflamed them with a new passion, which destroyed instinctive wisdom and the sceptre of Liberty, who was dethroned not without a capitulation which marked an honorable defeat.

The troops of her enemies, priests and soldiers, poured in upon Lapland from the neighboring states of Russia, Sweden and Denmark; but it was agreed that the wars of avarice, policy and ambition, which might be waged by the conquerors, should not involve the conquered. Nature gained a glorious triumph over policy; and the Laplanders though deprived of liberty, were left in the consolatory arms of peace.

The priests marched forward to establish the throne of avarice and superstition in the holy sanctuary of virtue and liberty. Nature's code, which is comprised in one law,-FORCE NOT YOUR WILL UPON ANOTHER,-and which was instinctively and religiously obeyed, removed. knowledge of vice and slavery.

The priests, attended by soldiers and traders, began their sacrilegious mission; finding the laws of Nature most sacredly obeyed, they contrived their first attack upon instinctive wisdom, and by the aid of traders, who dispersed their spirituous liquors, caused cessations of its power, so frequent though temporary, that the Laplanders, assaulted by the demon of fury and vengeance, introduced by intoxication, fled, from the rage of liberty de generated into licentiousness, to the arms of priestly despotism.

The transports of this new, but vigorous passion led them to the Christian altar, where they assented to and repeated articles of theological belief, which were equally impossible to their comprehension and their practice.

The priests having thus established their power, and that of the prince to whom they belonged, were not at all anxious to inquire into the state of the conscience of their proselytes, but contented themselves with collecting a revenue upon every breach of Christian rites; for they knew well, that the Laplanders had only changed their form, but not belief in the adoration of Nature, and that they continued their ancient practices and forms when private in their families; but these offered an increasing hope to the priest, whose revenue was augmented when he detected them.

The Laplanders, who were living in a state of instinctive, but not enlightened Nature, were in parental, but not political society; for the mode of existence in that country opposes association. The people subsist upon their flocks of rein-deer, and the face of the earth offers but scanty pasture for those animals; so that every family must have a range of thirty or forty miles for its support, which obliges them to separate from others, and this is the only part of the globe where political association is unnecessary, and parental is contracted and subdivided. In this Nature maintains her empire, and procures wellbeing and happiness to its creatures, gratifying and satiating all physical desires in the plenitude of liberty, and instinctive virtue, which teaches aversion to force, and

gives amiable ingenuity to persuade, and thereby assimilate and associate the will of a fellow-creature to our own. By this parental association the distinction of property, the cause of all civilized vice, is unknown, and sympathy, the circle and centre of all virtue, and the cause of all happiness, is created by congenial love.

Civilization, which by means of the external operation of the mind, increases the desires of man, and discovers, though not in the same proportion, means to gratify them, forced this asylum of Nature, reigning with her colleagues, liberty and virtue; and ever mistaking activity for happiness, ever in arms and rebellion against Nature, it usurped her lawful sovereignty, and began its own reign of slavery and error.

Churches were erected, and in them civilization fixed her throne. The Laplander was summoned at the distance of several hundred miles, to quit his flocks, defenceless, threatened by devouring wolves, and wandering half-starved from the pasture to which they demanded the guidance of their absent pastor; to leave the hapру home of peace and innocence, where tradition of ancient, and narrative of modern events, accorded to the sounds of rustic music, and the measure of the joyous dance gave to the mind that pleasing emotion which so modifies desire and content, which, together with physical pleasures, makes up the whole of happiness. From the bounds of content, the Laplander obeys the dread summons, and with food economized from the pangs of a hungry family, he arrives at the altar.

He approaches the angry priest, and with this food (cheeses of rein-deer) deprecates the wrath of the deity Civilization. The destructive phenomenon of Nature that he formerly feared and adored, was appeased by sup'plication and resignation; but this new destructive, and malignant moral phenomenon demanded the means of life, as a recompense for destroying it. The priest receives and appropriates this sacrifice, and in return puts into his mouth blasphemies against Nature, called articles of faith;

reads to him records of vice and cruelty, called holy writ; and instructs him to sacrifice his immediate happiness, proceeding from sympathy and probity, by inculcating principles of avarice, tyranny and falsehood, to procure, by way of consolation for the loss of present, an illusive eternal happiness.

The Laplander having made his offering, is sent back, his memory loaded with frequent and zealous injunctions to return with expiatory offerings, to atone for his want of belief in, or comprehension of the deity Civilization. He returns to his disconsolate and half-famished family, and consoles them with his relations how he has appeased the present wrath of the demon, which might, if neglected, increase into a fury that might demand their lives as a sacrifice.

The priests at particular periods make circuits of visitation, to levy fines upon those Laplanders, who dare follow the rites of Nature in preference to the painful and incompatible rites of civilization; and these fines are levied upon their backs and bellies; the raiment being torn from the one, and food from the other, because two individuals, whom Nature prompted to communicate [mutual] happiness, without offending a third, had not consulted the priest, to know whether Nature was right or wrong in composing such passions, and furnishing means to gratify them, discordant with civil institutions that must be adapted to moral and physical circumstances.

Their child is also taken from them by these religious harpies, under the pretext of instruction, and is forced from the honorable and useful occupation of pastor, supporting his aged and infirm parents, to the study of letters, as useless to him, as they have been hurtful to those who teach them; and when age emancipates him from the bondage of a school, he returns depraved and debilitated to a life of Nature.

O! enemies of Nature, and therefore enemies of Self, a part of Nature, what apology have ye to offer in behalf of this desolating tyrant, Civilization?-Is it, that it increases the means of gratifying, when it multiplies the

number of your passions? It does, but in what proportion? In that of one thousand to one on the side of misery or wants. Shut up then this box of Pandora, or if it must be opened, confine it to your own countries, and defile not, with your impious steps, the hallowed asylum of Nature, the residence of liberty, virtue and happiness.

In this holy land, let the man of wisdom alone approach, whose instructions will call Nature from the light of instinct to the intellectual light of reason; who will teach them with oral lessons, and make every man a book of precept and example, to explain that succinct, yet comprehensive and perfect law:

FORCE NOT YOUR WILL UPON OTHERS, BUT ASSOCIATE THEIRS TO YOUR OWN BY PERSUASION; for in this code of Nature is contained all wisdom, virtue and happiness.

The man of wisdom will instruct them how to preserve life, and gratify those passions which render it desirable; he will teach them their intimate connection with the aggregate mass of Nature, to promote sympathy and love of truth, the constituent parts of virtue; he will warn them against all assumptions of selfish partialities in property or power; and he will teach them the internal, and not external use of the mental faculties, which will show them, that to be able to love yourself, you must first know yourself; and that he who would make himself happy, must have the volition, and use the means to render happy all sensitive Nature.

The man of wisdom will proceed in the important and glorious enterprise of bringing these people from an imperfect to a perfect state of Nature; he will observe and consider the actions which produce pain, and those which produce pleasure; he will, by instruction enforced by example, teach them to avoid the one, and cultivate the other; and instead of violating natural liberty, by commanding and forcing the will, he will, by arguments of self-love, induce his proselytes to form volitions consistent with the well-being of their existence. By an amiable intercourse, founded on the principles of love, and