VOCAL LANGUAGE OF LAURA BRIDGEMAN. 113 



robbery of tbe many for the benefit of a few. Our's, I trust, will 

 continue to be the policy of unrestricted freedom of trade. Let duties 

 be imposed for revenue only on as many different articles as are worth 

 their collection, but cautiously kept within such bounds as not to 

 limit consumption, and they will reach their highest productiveness 

 with least inconvenience or injury. From this course, neither any 

 action of their neighbours, nor any desire of special protection of 

 particular interests, arising among their own citizens, will turn an 

 enlightened people, who will steadily discountenance every application 

 for that protection of special interests which always means a desire to 

 live at the public expense, and make personal or class advantages 

 prevail over the general good. 



ON THE VOCAL LANGUAGE OF LAURA BRIDGEMAN. 



BY DANIEL WILSON, LL>D. 



The study of the Science of Language in special reference to the 

 discussions of Ethnologists and Anthropologists on the origin and 

 progress of the human race, is giving novel importance to the rudest 

 utterances of savage tribes ; and even to the seemingly inarticulate 

 sounds and "gesture language" of the deaf mute. The origin of 

 Language itself, is anew discussed from very diverse points of view ; 

 and conflicting theories are sustained by evidence from many unex- 

 pected sources. Regarding language as a system of organic sounds 

 subservient to intelligent volition, and employed as the symbols of 

 ideas, the inquiry into the source of its primitive roots, is guided; 

 mainly in one or other of the two directions, either (1) of the miracu- 

 lous endowment of man with the requisite radicals as constituent 

 elements of language — "phonetic types," according to Professor Max 

 Miiller, " produced by a power inherent in nature : an instinct of the 

 mind as irresistible as any other instinct;" — or ^2) of the development 

 of language by man himself as a being already endowed with reason. 

 From among the many diverse sources of information relative to the 

 operations of the human mind in associating specific sounds with ideas. 



Vol. XI. H 



