dren as the guardians of their morals and the formers of their understandings, a premature youth will not lead to a premature marriage; nor the people complain that their lives are shorter than other persons.

I might here make some remarks on the way by which life is abridged of its natural duration in various parts of the globe, and in different stages of civilization; and from hence have proved, that the proper age of man is, in every region of the world, the same. That if a nobleman lives longer than the peasant, and that if the peasants of one country live longer than those of another, it does not arise from the nature of their constitutions, but from their conduct. But all I designed was, to prove that the age of man is threescore years and ten, and that no reduction can be expected to take place if this be accomplished my object is

attained.

1

t

IN the judgment of those philosophers who found theories on external characters, there is a redundancy, an unnecessary waste of creative power, in all the works of God. Africa is bounded by a desert, which it is impossible to

render otherwise; the arctic circles are inhospi

table and rude, unfit for the abode of man; the ocean itself is calculated to destroy, rather

than protect, the nobler parts of the animal creation; myriads of seed, brought to perfection, fall to the ground and perish; some animals are venemous, others ravenous, and seem to exist only that they may destroy; children are born and grow up idiots, others pass from the cradle to the grave. These vast regions of silence and of danger, these instances of cruelty and death, are lamented, by superficial observers, who con clude, because their utility is not apparent, that

they possess none; and hence the wisdom of the Creator is disputed.

ยา

Upon the principle of condemning what is not understood, Mr. Malthus has written his book. In his opinion, a few privileged individuals are alone permitted to enjoy the fruits of the earth, whilst the greater part of the population of the world, like the desert of Zaara, is calculated only to injure. To blot the desert from the universe is not in our power; but Mr. Malthus has pointed out the means by which the world is freed from its injurious population. However pleased our author may be with the idea that other parts of nature correspond with the overflowing and useless numbers of the human race, when the globe is contemplated as a whole, and as having been formed by design to answer a given purpose, no void or empty space, no exuberance, no want can be discovered: as the utility of every part is not equally apparent, the observer is silent where he cannot decide; he, however, sees enough that is good to believe all is such, and to increase his knowledge he enquires, and expresses his half discoveries in conjecture; of those places where no vegetables boromal skir grow, no animals breathe, he believes them useful in giving repose, and in restoring the

salubrity of the atmosphere, after the incessant decompositions to which it is subjected in the habitable parts of the earth. If he cannot discover the usefulness of an idiot, or of a stillborn infant, he is not bold enough to say there is no wisdom or consistency in the scheme of providence respecting them.

The brute creation presents as many seeming blank, unproductive, and useless parts, as the globe itself, or as the race of man: and as animals are below us in the scale of creation, and familiar to us by daily observation, we are able, in some measure, to comprehend the benefit one part derives from another, and to judge of the dependence of the parts on the whole and as brutes are endowed with a stronger principle of increase than man, by enquiring by what means their increase is checked, and they kept down to the level of their food, we may be assisted in our further enquiries.

In a country, fenced round and cultivated, man is the check: thousands of animals bleed to supply his table; he protects and then destroys them, and their number is balanced by his wants. This conduct has the semblance of cruelty, and Mr. M. would rank it under the head misery, but it does not admit of such a character: the

animals we use us food seldom die of sickness and disease, and it was never designed they should, as I shall hereafter attempt to prove. Death, in any form, is horrible,---but I do not know that a sudden extinction of life is more so than after a lingering disease; besides, the length of the life of a domestic animal, notwithstanding its being subjected to the will of man, is greater than those of the same species in the wild state: they are more numerous in our pas tures than in the forest, consequently, their lives being better protected, in the aggregate, are longer; and thus any idea of man's inflicting misery upon them, by putting them to death, loses its force. Man does not add to the misery of animals that sport in meadows made fertile by his labour; if they die by his hands, he shields them from many dangers, and thus increases the sum of their happiness. But all animals are not under the care and protection of man in the forest he has no influence, he has not even a habitation, and his right to controul and appro priate the feeblest animal would be contested by the stronger. In the forest, the lion and the panther, the leopard and the rhinoceros, make their dens, and reign undisturbed masters if one be killed in battle it is a male, which has no