ADAM SMITlt. 203 



redound only to the glory of the present generation. 

 He is speaking of the North American Indians. " The 

 same contempt of death and torture prevails among 

 all the savage nations. There is not a negro from the 

 coast of Africa who does not in this respect possess a 

 magnanimity which the soul of his sordid master is 

 too often scarce capable of conceiving. Fortune never 

 exerted more cruelly her empire on mankind, than 

 when she subjected this nation of heroes to the refuse 

 of the jails of Europe, to wretches who possess the 

 virtues neither of the countries which they come from 

 nor of those which they go to, and whose levity, 

 brutality, and baseness, so justly expose them to the 

 contempt of the vanquished." (Vol. II. p. 37.) 



How well has he painted the man of system, and 

 how many features of this portrait have we recognised 

 in Mr. Bentham, and others of our clay ! u He is apt 

 to be very wise in his own conceit, and is often so 

 enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal 

 plan of government that he cannot suffer the smallest 

 deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish 

 it completely, in all its parts, without any regard 

 either to the great interests or to the strong prejudices 

 which may oppose it. He seems to imagine that he 

 can arrange the different members of a great society 

 with as much ease as the hand arranges the different 

 pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that 

 the pieces upon the chess-board have no other prin- 

 ciple of motion beside that which the hand impresses 

 upon them; but that in the great chess-board of 

 human society, every single piece has a principle of 

 action of its own, altogether different from that which 

 the legislature might 'choose to impress upon it. If 

 these two principles coincide and act in the same 

 direction, the game of human society will go on easily 

 and harmoniously, and is very likely to be happy and 

 successful. If they are opposite or different, the game 

 will go on miserably, and the society must be at all 



