sacs a terre, 30,000 instruments pour la pionnage; 1,200,000 livres de
poudre. Ajoutez a ces munitions, le plomb, le fer, et le fer-blanc, les
cordages, tout ce qui sert aux mineurs, le souphre, le salpetre, les
outils de toute espece. Il est certain que les frais de tous ces
preparatifs de destruction suffiroient pour fonder et pour faire fleurir
la plus aombreuse colonie. Voltaire, Siecle de Louis XIV. c. xx. in his
Works. tom. xi. p. 391.]

Should these speculations be found doubtful or fallacious, there still
remains a more humble source of comfort and hope. The discoveries of
ancient and modern navigators, and the domestic history, or tradition,
of the most enlightened nations, represent the human savage, naked both
in body and mind and destitute of laws, of arts, of ideas, and almost
of language. [1001] From this abject condition, perhaps the primitive and
universal state of man, he has gradually arisen to command the animals,
to fertilize the earth, to traverse the ocean and to measure the
heavens. His progress in the improvement and exercise of his mental and
corporeal faculties [1101] has been irregular and various; infinitely slow
in the beginning, and increasing by degrees with redoubled velocity:
ages of laborious ascent have been followed by a moment of rapid
downfall; and the several climates of the globe have felt the
vicissitudes of light and darkness. Yet the experience of four thousand
years should enlarge our hopes, and diminish our apprehensions: we
cannot determine to what height the human species may aspire in their
advances towards perfection; but it may safely be presumed, that no
people, unless the face of nature is changed, will relapse into their
original barbarism. The improvements of society may be viewed under a
threefold aspect. 1. The poet or philosopher illustrates his age and
country by the efforts of a single mind; but those superior powers of
reason or fancy are rare and spontaneous productions; and the genius of
Homer, or Cicero, or Newton, would excite less admiration, if they could
be created by the will of a prince, or the lessons of a preceptor. 2.
The benefits of law and policy, of trade and manufactures, of arts and
sciences, are more solid and permanent: and many individuals may be
qualified, by education and discipline, to promote, in their respective
stations, the interest of the community. But this general order is the
effect of skill and labor; and the complex machinery may