16 On Man's Influence in effecting 



rior creatures ; which, no doubt, operated, in some instances, 

 well, as to the localities for which they were devised, but in 

 others present the most uncalled for and censurable cases, in 

 which the ministers of religion have meddled with human af- 

 fairs, and substituted their own arbitrary and short-sighted 

 views, for those which flow from an unprejudiced and en- 

 lightened consideration of the part which man is to act, with 

 reference to the lower animals. The religion of the Hindoo 

 nation, according to which it is sinful to kill any animal, from 

 man down to the microscopic animalcule, produces, wherever 

 it is in force, a most ridiculous encroachment of the animals 

 on the rights of man; and, but for the indirect influence of the 

 latter, and the order which nature keeps up, in spite of man, 

 such countries must be almost uninhabitable by him. The 

 peaceful co-existence of man with all the living creatures, has 

 indeed something in it, that will please us at first sight ; and 

 many may admire the tame peacocks or fish in India, which 

 latter are fed by the Hindoo watermen ; but if we cast a look 

 upon the hospitals for vermin, or consider that such a state of 

 things can only be kept up by enslaving the human mind by 

 pious fraud, and by rendering it unfit for the attainment of 

 much higher ends, we cannot help condemning it, both in 

 principle and practice. The ancient Egyptian priesthood 

 thought proper to take a great many animals under their special 

 protection, by casting round them the odour of sanctity ; they 

 did so in such a whimsical manner, that they promoted the 

 multiplication as well of the most useful as the most injurious 

 wild species ; for instance, the ibis and the crocodile. Even 

 the Mosaic law, by declaring many animals to be unclean, 

 must have had a decided influence upon their numbers ; and 

 though we cannot see why eating the flesh of hares, rabbits, 

 or ostriches, was deemed to be particularly unwholesome, 

 even to the unclean people which the Jews appear to have 

 been, about the time of Moses, yet we can even less conceive 

 why the red Caffres, (Bichuanas), should have added to most 

 of the animals unclean to the Jews, every species of fish, un- 

 less they were made to believe it was the law of the creator. 

 The Roman hierarchy has not tried to enslave the human 

 mind in that respect ; though by eating, almost exclusively, 

 fish, on many days, which is called fasting, the followers of 

 that confession have vastly contributed to diminish the num- 

 bers, not only of many species of Piscis, (Linn.) but of other 

 animals, as water fowl, the otter, beaver, which are classed 

 with the fish by the infallible church. 



In adverting to the worldly forms of government, as not 

 complicated by the hierarchy, the pure democratic, where 



