and to possess means to gratify the same, and to procure judgment, which may direct that volition and means to well-being and happiness of the man. Whatever oppo

ses that judgment, must be inimical to man, as what aids it must be friendly.

Nothing proves so strongly the false principles of civil institutions, as the political tenet of necessity to keep the people in ignorance. This tenet is justified upon considerations of relative truth: for example; suppose any one nation, to cultivate truth; in proportion as this advanced, coercion would recede, and ultimately leave mankind in a state of absolute liberty, which would be employed in enjoying happiness, or a state of pleasure, repose and content. If the neighboring nations continued in a state of ignorance, coercion would oblige them to substitute wealth and power to pleasure, labor and care to repose, and ambition and avarice to content. This disposition would lead them to invade their happy neighbors, in order to subdue and enslave them; but moral principles are like seed on the earth, which in many cases may be dispersed, and trod to destruction, yet some will not fail to take root, and these will invigorate and multiply, and may eventually cover the whole earth with vegetation.

Nations tremble, therefore, at this effect of truth, and dread the revolution or innovation, which may change its acorns into oaks, though these latter must ultimately vegetate over all Nature, and shade it from the injuries of ignorance and violence.

The innovations that truth must naturally bring about, would not appal strong minds, if they reflected, that the agitation which the falling pebble of truth causes in the centre of the lake, subsides into easy undulations, which spread themselves to the extremities, without injuring the waters. The innovations of error are alone to be dreaded. Truth and Nature, oppose the recoiling frothy waves, and never suffer a calm upon the lake of humanity, while error like a hurricane, continues to trouble its waters.

Of what little value is the present period of existence, compared to eternity?-how important is that reform which promises eternal happiness to our immortal connections with Nature, when this essence dissolves, and breaks our present form of connection with Nature. Since the elements in motion may convey our connections to the climes of Africa, some members of the British senate, not yet arrived at a state of intellectual existence, who vote the continuation of African slavery and misery, no doubt perpetuate that injustice and cruelty to their own connections, or future essence in Nature. However this doctrine of connection may, by its novelty and importance, dazzle or confound minds unused to abstract contemplation, or the common exercise of thought; to an intellectual mind, that can invert its powers upon self, it appears intuitive, easy and almost demonstrative, from the universal transformation of matter into matter, and the impossibility to conceive its cessation, though we can. not imagine its mode of connection with Nature.

Let us now consider what are the causes that disorder these canals, or oppose this machine, man, in his progress on the right line to well-being, or happiness. First, let them be considered in an INDIVIDUAL STATE.

In this state his opponents or enemies are, physical ills, as hunger, beasts, sickness, disorder of the elements, and enemies of his own species. These alternately interrupt his repose, and destroy him. His mental faculties, in a progressive improvement, lead him to associa tion, which may guard him against these evils; but as the faculties of the mind are slow in improvement, association, will be slow in its effect, but like all parts of Nature, will move in a circle of perfection and destruction. Let us now view the animal man in a

STATE OF ASSOCIATION.

THE first state of association of men was domestic, and it seems to have been well adapted to the enjoyment of animal happiness, or corporeal well-being, by their mutual aid in building houses, nursing in sickness, procuring provision, increasing defence against the common enemy, and improving their mental powers and sensual pleasures, by inter-communication. In this state, however it might be corporeally grateful, the mental faculties had no power, either to confer consciousness of existence, or intellectual happiness, and could not arrest the evil progress of a too extensive association, which introduced the different violences of personal tyranny, assumption of property, and public or civilized coercion, which destroyed all liberty and with it happiness.

The progress of the extension of association, will no doubt, at length so improve the mental faculties, that it will discover that state, individual and social, which the essence of man requires, to procure to it well-being or happy existence.

As long as individual violence exists, so long must exist public coercion; but this should only be exercised over the violators. I know but one other instance where it has the slightest pretext of justification, which is, in compelling the individual to labor on his proportion of soil, which gives subsistence to the society; but this would be rendered absolutely unnecessary by the example of education; for as the labor of one man would maintain twenty, the unconquerable indolence of a few perverse individuals, who might resist the force of education, can never be a sufficient reason to employ coercion, which is the demon of all sensitive Nature. Besides, the example of many Indian tribes, who cultivate the soil in common, and have substituted the habit of custom and education for coercion, demonstrates this to be the error of civilization, and shows the superiority of

uncorrupted instinct over corrupted and prejudiced reason, by conducting the animal, man, nearer to a state of well-being; though this can only be perfected and secured by enlightened reason.

The present mode of association is founded upon ignorance and error. The competition of nations for riches and power has obliged them to sacrifice happiness to those objects, and states and individuals are both the victims of this folly

Let us review the life of man in the present state of civilization. The poor man, upon whose labor depends the riches of the state, is, by the avarice and policy of the great, obliged to such excessive toil, as reduces him to a state of mere animal existence, and a premature and painful dissolution. He is so stimulated by the goad of necessity, that his mind, attached to the object of his labor, leaves him no repose, in which alone the faculty of thought can extend itself, and acquire consciousness of existence; so that his body becomes a painful duct or stage of matter, in its eternal revolution. The rich and powerful, who cause this evil, are themselves no less unhappy, though relieved from the goad of necessity, which they inflict upon others, to urge them to excessive labor. They do not labor sufficiently to procure themselves health, and this reduces them to a state of languor, from which they seek relief by the occupation of the mind, which, though it may cure that disorder, causes, by sedentary habits, a variety of others more painful.

The moral laws of chastity oppress with greater violence the rich females than the poor. The former, from their luxurious diet, derive irritable habits of blood, which inflame the passions, and these are incessantly exposed to the temptations attendant on the mode of conduct in high life; while the poor are freed from this torment, and its various causes. I allude only to the females; for the males, who have contrived by superior power to impose this law upon the weaker sex, disavow its duties; and disease, premature and painful old age and death revenge their treachery; for by imposing continence upon the

whole gentle sex, the few, whose sense and sensibility see and break through the cobweb fetters of imagination, and claim their rightful asylum of Nature, from the smallness of their number, have to seek subsistence from the brutal lust of their tyrants, and become repositories, or common sewers of such pestilential diseases, that man, like the phenix, procreates in a burning nest.

The laws of chastity are intended to promote population, and population to increase defence. Would it not be wiser to consider, whether an unhappy people ought to be augmented, or desire to be defended; and whether it is acting as becomes intellectual beings, conscious of their eternal connection with the integer of Nature, to augment the quantity of matter in animal revolution, while the ducts or stages of identities are formed to communicate misery to passive matter, and perpetuate it to the active, or procreator.

FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS

OF

MATTER.

THE mind is overwhelmed with astonishment when it reflects, that the intellectual faculties seem to have lost their natural gravitation towards self, and are constantly propelled from their true centre. They have formed, or imagined a knowledge of motion, by an universal intelligence-they have discovered the laws of planetary revolutions of distant worlds-they have discovered the various laws of Nature in the parts of their own inhabited world—and yet the centre self is as unknown and neglected, as if it was a non-entity.

What can be the cause of this moral phenomenon? It would seem as if Nature had, by the propelling force of prejudice and error, elevated the mind to a great distance from its centre that in returning, by falling from such a