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that the "Asiatic barbarians” are incapable of advancing beyond a certain and limited degree of refinement. Nature seems to have refused them that aptitude for civilization, by which the European barbarians of Le Sage, have been uniformly distinguished. The innate diversity which obtains as to tractableness in the brute creation, may well exist in our own species, with regard to susceptibility of refinement. When I look to the character and history of the American Indians, I am the more inclined to believe, that the Almighty providence has, in his inscrutable wisdom, established in this respect among the several tribes of men, an inequality analogous to the gradation of docility observable in the different races, or in the varieties of the same race, of quadrupeds.

The annals and present condition of the first and second classes above mentioned, minutely compared, will lead universally to this conclusion.* That original spring by which the former appears to have been impelled onward to perfection, seems to have been wanting to the latter. The nature of the European, in the sense of Le Sage, may be said to have expelled barbarism;-to have purified and reformed itself, by internal workings. We can trace a more vigorous principle of moral exaltation than was given to the Asiatic, who has stopped far short of the other, and for whom, if he be at all capable of reaching the same point, a longer probation and more direct external aid, would seem to be necessary. If we admit that his backwardness is owing merely to adventitious circumstances, it cannot, however, be denied, that they give nearly the same result; a barbarism scarcely less deep, and difficult of cure. Whether the Turks or Tartars, be such as they are from nature, or untoward fortune, their moral constitution opposes peculiar obstacles to their complete civilization, and would require more care and time in the process, than that of the Europeans demanded at any epoch.

The Russians, properly so called, cast in the European mould, conformably to the delineation of Le Sage, partook, nevertheless, of the Asiatic genius by a community of institutions, habits, and

There reigns in Asia, says Montesquieu, a servile spirit which they have never been able to shake off, and it is impossible to find, in all the histories of this quarter, a single passage which discovers a free soul; we shall never see any thing there but the heroism of slavery.

doctrines. Under this point of view, the western nations were right in considering them as an Asiatic power, although their seat of dominion, and principal strength lay in Europe. They had contracted, among other inauspicious feelings, the hatred of all innovation, and the obstinate self-complacency, to which many writers ascribe the sluggishness of the Turks, in the career of improvement, who are yet, perhaps, in the mass, further advanced than the bulk of the Russians.

The Russians, therefore, if they did not labour under precisely the same natural incapacity of European refinement, which I would ascribe to the Asiatics, could be scarcely more flexible, or reclaimable within a shorter time, and with less active succour. The considerations which I have stated, may serve with other causes, to explain the acknowledged slowness of their progress, until the middle of the last century, and my incredulity with respect to the rapidity with which they are alleged to have advanced since the beginning of the present.

Whoever examines the general question on all sides, will be convinced, how incorrigible is the spirit of that peculiar barbarism, in which the Russians were plunged; how deep and durable its seal. With the western Europeans, civilization might be, and was, in some degree, the work of accident; but in Russia, it can be only that of wisdom, and patriotism, and absolute power, profiting zealously, and patiently, and sagaciously, of every propitious circumstance. In respect to some of the oriental tribes, included within her empire, I do not believe that success on this score can ever be had.

England has long since reached, as to civilization, what the French call un aplomb, and is now in that state. France has been since her revolution, verging towards barbarism, and will inevitably settle in it, should her present government be consolidated. Russia is urged forward by powerful impulses, but forcibly drawn back at the same time, by her old prejudices, habits, and vices of civil and political constitution, which it is by no means easy to remove, or counteract.

The Marquis D'Argenson observes, in his Political Disquisitions,* that a whole people contracts bad habits under a bad rule, * Article 16th.

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like an ill educated child; and that habits of this sort,-although they may be finally expelled,-inhere for a long time in the ground-work of the national character. If this remark be true, of such habits, it must be particularly so, of those arising both from the infection of oriental barbarism, and a continuous subjection of many centuries, to the worst of governments.

I am satisfied, that the spirit of chivalry* to which western Europe owes, in part, her extrication from the grossness and evils of the feudal system, never could have sprung up, nor flourished, among the Asiatic barbarians; or wherever oriental barbarism had taken root. It was unknown to Russia, although she early embraced the christian religion, to which it owed what was most distinctive and excellent in its character. Her christianity was still oriental, and had rather imbibed her Asiatic genius, than transfused its own.

I must confess, that when I meditate upon these matters, I doubt whether the Russians can be greatly amended, before they shall be able to master Europe; and I do then shudder with double horror at the prospect of this catastrophe, when I consider, in addition, what have been uniformly the nature and effects of the conquests made by the middle class, the barbares mitoyens of Le Sage. In this particular, they are, throughout their whole history, no less strikingly and disadvantageously contrasted with the European barbarians, than in every other respect. "The nations in the north of Europe," says Montesquieu, "conquered as freemen; the people in the north of Asia being themselves enslaved, conquered as slaves, and subdued others only to gratify the ambition of a master. The Tartars, who destroyed the Grecian empire, established in the conquered countries, slavery and despotic power; the Goths conquering the Roman empire, every where founded monarchy and liberty."t

*I do not know any work in which this spirit is more fully or beautifully developed than in the late masterly production of Md. de Stael, De L'Allemagne. Both the fair author, however, and her ingenious critic of the Edinburgh Review, seem to have mistaken the origin of chivalry, which is preperly Saracenic.

† See further on this head, Spirit of Laws, B. 17. c. 6.

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