194 NATURAL AND CIVIL 



murders of the inquisition subsisted for centu- 

 ries : they were sanctioned by law, and are not 

 yet done away. Imprisonment, confiscation, 

 and death iji its most awful forms, wxre the 

 punishments v/hich bigots, whenever they had 

 power, never failed to inflict with great pleas- 

 ure, upon those who were wise and virtuous 

 enough to oppose them. The massacre on St. 

 Bartholomew's day, in 1572, was one of tlie 

 most barbarous and horrid of all human trans- 

 actions. In the midst of the most polite city 

 in Europe, the king, ^ ptinces, nobility, and 

 priests, turned monsters, assassins, and butch- 

 ers ; and murdered thirty thousand of their fel- 

 low men, on account of their religion. Their 

 rage was attended with circumstances af inhu- 

 man cruelty and barbarity, far exceeding the 

 £erce and bloody passions of the savages of A- 

 merica. Our own countrvmen ous:ht not to 

 forget, tliat revenge has also transported them 

 into a conduct, equally inhuman and barbarous 

 as that of the Indians. At the conclusion of 

 the Indian war, in 1G76, the government tried 

 several of their captives, by the English laws : 

 Some were condemned, and executed upon the 

 gallows ; and others were sent to consume their 

 days, in the slavery of the West India Islands : 

 A punishment, to them more severe than death. 

 In, the cruelty and barbarit^y of the Indian, 

 man appears in a situation but little removed 

 from the brutal ferocity of the beast of prey. 

 But when avarice, bigotry, and revenge, pro- 

 duce the same infernal spirit among civilized 

 nations, cruelty appears with a more diabolical 

 aspect ; not like the rage of wild beasts, but 



