EXCURSION TO THE REALMS BELOW. 167 



to their reftlefs, roving, hunting or paftoral life, their 

 rude manners, bodily force and untraceable fpirit 

 fuited to their rude climate, and to the wars in which 

 either the greater hordes or the fmaller fteins were per- 

 petually engaged againft each other, and by which they 

 were reciprocally vexed and harraffed, overcome, or 

 even totally extirpated. But this kind of freedom bor- 

 dered too much on abfolute ferocity, for being the ftate 

 wherein the human fpecies could attain to the degree 

 of formation, perfection and welfare, to which nature 

 has difpofed it. Freedom, without a wifely planned 

 and artificially organifed form of government, exube- 

 rates but too foon into wildnefs and barbarifm, and is 

 in its effects but little better than the flavery of the def- 

 potical government. Both check the progrefs of cul- 

 ture, eternize the infancy of the human race, and force 

 whole nations, of the happier! difpohtions, endowments, 

 and circumflances, to Hand ftill for thoufands of years 

 together at the fame point of improvement. The only 

 difference to the advantage of the favage ftate, is, that 

 it leaves the nobler natural faculties of man unenfeebled in 

 a ftate of torpor, whereas by flavery they are maimed, 

 curtailed, and totally deprefled. A body of rude fa- 

 vages may form themfelves, under favourable circum- 

 fiances, by degrees into a nation, who with great cor- 

 poreal and moral powers ? may tend upwards to that 

 wherein connfts the perfection of human nature : on 

 the contrary, no good can come of a nation, that has 

 been habituated for many generations to crouch under 

 the yoke, and to bear with ftupid patience every bur- 

 den that can be heaped upon their backs ; they muft 

 firft be ruined, and, as it were, demolifhed by fome 



M 4 extraordinary 



