This Is Undoubtedly An Object Of
Contemplation Which Calls Forth Our Warmest Gratitude; For So
Singularly Benevolent Have Those Parental
Intentions been, that
where barrenness of soil or severity of climate prevail, there she
has implanted in the heart of
Man, sentiments which overbalance
every misery, and supply the place of every want. She has given to
the inhabitants of these regions, an attachment to their savage
rocks and wild shores, unknown to those who inhabit the fertile
fields of the temperate zone. Yet if we attentively view this globe,
will it not appear rather a place of punishment, than of delight?
And what misfortune! that those punishments should fall on the
innocent, and its few delights be enjoyed by the most unworthy.
Famine, diseases, elementary convulsions, human feuds, dissensions,
etc., are the produce of every climate; each climate produces
besides, vices, and miseries peculiar to its latitude. View the
frigid sterility of the north, whose famished inhabitants hardly
acquainted with the sun, live and fare worse than the bears they
hunt: and to which they are superior only in the faculty of
speaking. View the arctic and antarctic regions, those huge voids,
where nothing lives; regions of eternal snow: where winter in all
his horrors has established his throne, and arrested every creative
power of nature. Will you call the miserable stragglers in these
countries by the name of men? Now contrast this frigid power of the
north and south with that of the sun; examine the parched lands of
the torrid zone, replete with sulphureous exhalations; view those
countries of Asia subject to pestilential infections which lay
nature waste; view this globe often convulsed both from within and
without; pouring forth from several mouths, rivers of boiling
matter, which are imperceptibly leaving immense subterranean graves,
wherein millions will one day perish! Look at the poisonous soil of
the equator, at those putrid slimy tracks, teeming with horrid
monsters, the enemies of the human race; look next at the sandy
continent, scorched perhaps by the fatal approach of some ancient
comet, now the abode of desolation. Examine the rains, the
convulsive storms of those climates, where masses of sulphur,
bitumen, and electrical fire, combining their dreadful powers, are
incessantly hovering and bursting over a globe threatened with
dissolution. On this little shell, how very few are the spots where
man can live and flourish? even under those mild climates which seem
to breathe peace and happiness, the poison of slavery, the fury of
despotism, and the rage of superstition, are all combined against
man! There only the few live and rule, whilst the many starve and
utter ineffectual complaints: there, human nature appears more
debased, perhaps than in the less favoured climates. The fertile
plains of Asia, the rich low lands of Egypt and of Diarbeck, the
fruitful fields bordering on the Tigris and the Euphrates, the
extensive country of the East Indies in all its separate districts;
all these must to the geographical eye, seem as if intended for
terrestrial paradises:
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