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ftian, or that the want of this ceremony will precipitate them into hell? The Lithuanians, before their conversion to Chriftianity, worshipped ferpents, every fami-. ly entertaining one as a household god. Sigifinundus, in his commentaries of Mufcovy, reports the following incident. A converted Chriftian having perfuaded a neighbour to follow his example, and in token of his converfion to kill his ferpent, was furprised at his next vifit, to find his convert in the deepest melancholy, bitterly lamenting that he had murdered his god, and that the most dreadful calamities' would befal him. Was this perfon a Christian more than nominally? At the end of the last century when Kempfer was in Japan, there remained but about fifty Japan Christians, who were locked up in prifon for life. These poor people knew no more of the Christian religion, but the names of our Saviour and of the Virgin Mary; and fo zealous Chriftians were they, as rather to die miferably in jail, than to renounce the name of Christ, and be fet at liberty. The inhabitants of the ifland Annaboa in the gulf of Guinea have been converted by the Portuguese to ChriVOL. IV. ftianity.

yet

3 I

stianity. No more is required of them, as Bosman obferves, but to repeat a Pater nofter and Ave Maria, confefs to the priest, and bring offerings to him.

I cannot with fatisfaction conclude this. sketch, without congratulating my present countrymen of Britain, upon their knowledge of the intimate connection that true religion has with morality. May the importance of that connection, always at heart, excite us to govern every action of our lives by the united principles of morality and religion :- what a happy people would we be !

A P

APPENDI X.

Sketches concerning SCOTLAND.

SKETCH I.

Scotch Entails confidered in Moral and Political views.

M

AN is by nature a hoarding animal; and to fecure what is acquired by honeft induftry, the fense of property is made a branch of human nature (a). During the infancy of nations, when artificial wants are unknown, the hoarding appetite makes no figure. The use of money produced a great alteration in the human heart. Money having at command the goods of fortune, introduced inequality of rank, luxury, and artificial wants without end.

(a) Book 1. fketch 2.
3 I 2

No

No bounds are fet to hoarding, where an appetite for artificial wants is indulged: love of money becomes the ruling paffion: it is coveted by many in order to be hoarded; and means are abfurdly converted into an end.

The sense of property, weak among favages, ripens gradually till it arrives at maturity in polifhed nations. In every ftage of the progrefs, fome new power is added to property; and now for centuries, men have enjoy'd every power over their own goods, that a rational mind can defire (a) they have the free difpofal during life; and even after death, by naming an heir. These powers are fufficient for accomplishing every rational purpose they are fufficient for commerce, and they are fufficient for benevolence. But the artificial wants of men are boundless: not content with the full enjoyment of their property during life, nor with the profpect of its being enjoy'd by a favourite heir, they are anxiously bent to preserve it to themfelves for ever. A man who has amaffed a great estate in land, is miferable at the

(a) Historical Law-tracts, tract 3.

profpect

prospect of being obliged to quit his hold: to footh his diseased fancy, he makes a deed fecuring it for ever to certain heirs ; who must without end bear his name, and preferve his eftate entire. Death, it is true, must at last separate him from his idol it is fome confolation, however, that his will governs and gives law to every subsequent proprietor. How repugnant to the frail ftate of man, are fuch fwollen conceptions! Upon these however are founded entails, which have prevailed in many parts of the world, and unhappily at this day infest Scotland. Did entails produće no other mischief but the -gratification of a distempered appetite, they might be endured, though far from deferving approbation: but, like other tranfgreffions of nature and reason, they are productive of much mischief, not only to commerce, but to the very heirs for whose fake alone it is pretended that they are made.

Confidering that the law of nature has bestow'd on man every power of property that is neceffary either for commerce or for benevolence, how blind was it in the English legislature to add a moft irrational Beqtorq

power,

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