s one of the many who assert that savage life is happier than
civil. His reasons are thus abridged: The savage has no care or fear for
the future; his hunting and fishing give him a certain subsistence. He
sleeps sound, and knows not the diseases of cities. He cannot want what
he does not desire, nor desire that which he does not know, and vexation
or grief do not enter his soul. He is not under the control of a
superior in his actions; in a word, says our author, the savage only
suffers the evils of nature.

If the civilized, he adds, enjoy the elegancies of life, have better
food, and are more comfortably defended against the change of seasons,
it is use which makes these things necessary, and they are purchased by
the painful labours of the multitude who are the basis of society. To
what outrages is not the man of civil life exposed? if he has property,
it is in danger; and government or authority is, according to our
author, the greatest of all evils. If there is a famine in North
America, the savage, led by the wind and the sun, can go to a better
clime; but in the horrors of famine, war, or pestilence, the ports and
barriers of civilized states place the subjects in a prison, where they
must perish. There still remains an infinite difference between the lot
of the civilized and the savage; a difference, all entirely to the
disadvantage of society, that injustice which reigns in the inequality
of fortunes and conditions.

[26] The innocent simplicity of the Americans in their conferences with
the Spaniards, and the horrid cruelties they suffered from them, divert
our view from their complete character. Almost everything was horrid in
their civil customs and religious rites. In some tribes, to cohabit with
their mothers, sisters, and daughters was esteemed the means of domestic
peace. In others, catamites were maintained in every village; they went
from house to house as they pleased, and it was unlawful to refuse them
what victuals they chose. In every tribe, the captives taken in war were
murdered with the most wanton cruelty, and afterwards devoured by the
victors. Their religious rites were, if possible, still more horrid. The
abominations of ancient Moloch were here outnumbered; children, virgins,
slaves, and captives bled on different altars, to appease their various
gods. If there was a scarcity of human victims, the priests announced
that the gods were dying of thirst for human blood. And, to prevent a
thre