Absentee of Deserts i?i the U?iited States. 81 



feelings, sterling integrity, truth, and that habitual propriety that 

 discharges all the duties of man to his fellows; are unpractised, 

 and comport not with such an uncertain state. The religion of 

 the inhabitants of the desert, is wild and superstitious, because it 

 has no moral guarantee. The imagination creates the punitive 

 power that makes brown the desert, that waves with the sands, 

 and spreads around famine and devastation. It is invoked to de- 

 stroy, and worshipped from fear. The ways of God to man are 

 Dot justified, as in that fabric of good order, intelligence, and vir- 

 tue, which is reared under more favourable circumstances. 



Liberty, in such countries, is the freedom of the desert, as 

 unfixed as its votaries, and as wild as nature herself. Man's 

 safety there, is not the guarantee of the laws, but the strength 

 of his own arm, or the ease with which he can escape. He 

 governs himself by circumstances, not by any principles of justice, 

 or legislative enactments. Government has reared no permanent 

 altar in such countries ; it moves in wild democracy with the 

 wanderings of man ; and accommodates itself to all his irregu- 

 larities. We see, therefore, that our race, in such countries as 

 are connected with the deserts, is scant and of uncouth form ; 

 their virtues wild and rudely primitive, their labour unavailable, 

 wealth and improvements have no place, the arts and elegances 

 of life have no existence, commerce no basis, Hberty and religion 

 no temples but the desert, and no guarantees but a wild and 

 irregular nature. 



In the United States it is widely different. We are exempted 

 from desents and all their concomitant evils. An almost uninter- 

 rupted fertility spreads through our extensive land, with scarcely a 

 mountain crag to break its continuity. Equally secure from an 

 injurious excess of moisture, we lean with confidence upon our 

 seasons; we understand our climate, we appreciate the produc- 

 tiveness of our soil, and feel that we have all the guarantees 

 which nature can give against want and famine ; all the certainty 

 of property in the avails of our labour, every stimulus to exer- 

 tion and industry, and the most perfect assurance to us and our 

 posterity, of moral and physical enjoyment. Where nature her- 

 self is regular, the population full of intelligence, the arts well 

 established, and plenty throughout the land, good order and good 

 taste will prevail. Liberty, with just government, is the natural 

 consequence of such a condition of things. Already has it taken 

 Vol. I.— 11 



