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the water, six persons, three men and three women, rose along with it, either produced by the sun, or sent by the deity to inhabit it. This Mezoraim was one of the six, and he made choice of Egypt for the place of his habitation, and there settled with his children and grand-children, governing them as a real father, and instructing them to live together as brothers of one and the same family. Here they flourished, say the Memoirs, four hundred years, increasing in number and in knowledge, without guile or deceit, until the descendants of the other men, who were as wicked and envious as the Mezoranians were innocent and happy, invaded them, committing all manner of violence upon the aboriginal inhabitants. The Mezoranians, ignorant of the art of war, and abhorring the shedding of blood, were unable to resist their enemies. Some were subdued, and others expelled from their once happy country. The father of the present nation, justly imagining that there must be some habitable place beyond the great deserts, resolved upon an expedition to explore them. His success was equal to his wishes, and he settled with his children in a delicious valley situated in the midst of the deserts. Here they lived undisturbed and happily for some time, till their number became too great to allow them to continue longer in this valley, and induced them to make one more emigration, which ended in their final settlement in their present country.

Their first Pophar, having five sons, divided his kingdom into five nomes or districts, over each of which he placed one of his sons with the title of Pophar, but still being subordinate to their father, who assumed the title of Chief Patriarch or Grand Pophar. "Each father of a family governs all his descendants, married or unmarried, as long as he lives; if his sons are fathers they have a subordinate authority under him: if he dies before he comes to such an age, the eldest son or eldest uncle takes care of them till they are sufficient to set up a family of themselves. The father, on extraordinary occasions, is liable to be inspected by five of the most prudent heads of that district; these last, by the heads of the five nomes, and all the nomes by the Grand Poplar, assisted with three hundred and sixty-five elders or senators chosen out of every nome." Although they are all equal in birth, yet an entire dependency or natural subordination of eldership runs through their whole economy. They have all a certain portion of land assigned to them, of which they are lords or proprietors, although the Grand Pophar and Governors can dispose of every thing for the public benefit, because they look upon him to be as much the father of all as the immediate natural father is of his proper children. The mode in which the right of succession is regulated is somewhat intricate. It will be sufficient to state generally, that it depends entirely

upon eldership, and is in a particular manner hereditary. In a word, they form one great family of brothers-all masters and all servants. Generally speaking, the younger sort wait upon the elder, changing their offices as their superiors think proper. They all join in building their towns and public places, and in laying up stores and provisions over and above their own consumption. "They live in some measure in common, every man going into whatever house he pleases as if it were his own home. This they are perpetually doing throughout the whole country, rather visiting than merchandizing, exchanging the rarities of each respective place with those of other parts, just like friends making presents to each other."

The author anticipates the most obvious objection to which a community or partial community of property is liable,-that there is a danger it may give a check to industry; but he endeavours to get rid of it by substituting the love of the grandeur of their country, in which they place their individual glory, and the emulation caused by a judicious distribution of public honours, and "a thousand other arts of shew and pageantry, and this for the most minute arts, that were it not for the fraternal love ingrafted in them from their infancy, they would be in danger of raising their emulation to too great a height."

Laws for the government of such a community must necessarily be few and simple; and accordingly we are told, that their laws were nothing but the first principles of natural justice judged and explained by the elders. Their chief and golden rule was, "Thou shalt do no wrong to any one," without entering into nice definitions of what was right or wrong, which, say they, may easily be decided by any man of sense and equity. Besides, they think that the promulgation of precept upon precept and laws upon laws makes the fundamental principles to be forgotten, and indeed oftener shews people how they may ingeniously contrive to do an injury than how to avoid it. They have express laws, however; one of the most singular and characteristic of which is described in the following extract.

"There is a positive law amongst them, not to shed human blood voluntarily. They carry this fundamental law of nature to such a height, that they never put any one to death, even for murder, which very rarely happens; that is, once in several ages. If it appears that a person has really murdered another, a thing they think almost impossible, the person convicted is shut up from all commerce of men, with provisions to keep him alive as long as nature allows. After his death the fact is proclaimed, as it was when they shut him up, over all the nomes. His name is blotted out of their genealogies; then his dead body is mangled just in the same manner as he killed the innocent, and afterwards burnt to ashes, which are carried up to the highest part of the deserts, and then tost up into the air, to be carried away

by the winds blowing from their own country: nor is he ever more to be reckoned as one of their race, and there is a general mourning observed throughout the kingdom for nine days."

There is also an express law against adultery, which is likewise punished after death; but public disgraces are the sole punishments for all other offences.

On the subject of their religion, we must observe that they are idolaters; for although they acknowledge one supreme God, the maker of all things, yet they consider the sun as the chief instrumental cause of all productions, and on this account offer up their prayers to it. The men look upon the moon to be a material being dependent on the sun; but the women, remarks the author very archly, seem to make a goddess of her, by reason of the influence she has over that sex.

"The sum therefore of the theoretical part of their religion is, first, that the El is the supreme intellectual, rational, and most noble of all beings; that it is the duty of all intellectual beings to imitate the just laws of reason in him, otherwise they depart from the supreme rule of all their actions, since what is contrary to the most perfect reason in God, must be contrary to our own, and by consequence a deformity, highly blameable in his sight; all their prayers, and whatever they ask of this supreme being, is, that they may be just and good as he is."

They have also a superstitious worship of their deceased ancestors, which is partly a religious and partly a politic institution; "because their government being patriarchal, the inviolable respect they shew to their parents makes them obey their governors and elders, not only with the most dutiful observance, but even with a filial love and alacrity." This reverential feeling it was that led them, as the star in the east did the wise men, from their adopted country to the strange lands where the objects of their veneration reposed, for the purpose of performing their devotions to their ancestors' tombs. The very dust around them was sacred, and they collected small portions of it in the course of their journey, which were put into golden urns, to be deposited in their temples, the performance of which forms one of the chief ceremonials of their religion. They believe in the immortality of the soul, and

"The rewards and punishments in the next life, they believe will chiefly consist in this; that in proportion as their actions have been conformable to the just ideas of the Supreme Being in this life, partaking still more and more of his infinite wisdom, so their souls will approach still nearer to the beautiful intelligence of their divine model in the next. But if their actions in this life have been inconsistent with the supreme reason in God, they shall be permitted to go on for ever

in that inconsistency and disagreement, till they become so monstrously wicked and enormous, as to become abominable even to themselves."

The author pleasantly ridicules the metempsychosis, by ascribing to them the belief of the transmigration of souls of a very different kind from that held by the ancient heathen philosophers, not as a punishment in the next but in this life. The substance of this creed is, that the souls of different kinds of brutes enter into the souls of men-a creed which makes them consummate physiognomists.

The subject of education forms a very important branch of the civil polity of the Mezoranians. All the children are taught at the public expense and they have no other distinction than personal merit. The sublimest sciences are most in request with them, and are chiefly the employment of their great men and governors, contrary to the custom of other countries, rightly conceiving that those who excel in the most rational sciences, are not only fittest to govern a rational people, but of making themselves masters of what they undertake; and they are accordingly marked out for governors. On the subject of education, the author has the following judicious observations.

"But now I am speaking of their youth, as they look upon them as seeds of the common-wealth, which if corrupted in the bud will never bring forth fruit, so their particular care is laid out in their education, in which I believe they excel all nations yet known. One cannot say there is one person in the whole nation who may be called an idle person, though they indulge their youth very much in proper recreations, endeavouring to keep them as gay as they can, because they are naturally inclined to gravity, and besides daily recreations, they have set times and seasons for public exercises, as riding, vaulting, running, but particularly hunting wild beasts, and fishing for crocodiles and alligators, in their great lakes, which I shall describe on another occasion; yet they are never suffered to go alone, that is, a company of young men together, without grave men and persons in authority along with them, who are a guard to them in their actions: nay, they are never suffered to lye together, each lying in a single bed, though in a publick room, with some grave person in the same room with them. Their women are kept much in the same manner, which to prevent inconveniences I shall touch upon when I come to the education of their women, and this so universally, that as there are no idle companions to lead them into extravagancies, so there are no idle and loose women to be found to corrupt their purity. Their whole time, both for men and women, is taken up in employments or publick recreations, which, with the early care to instruct them in the fundamental principles of the morality of the country, prevents all those disorders of youth we see elsewhere. Hence comes that strength of body and mind in their men, and modest bloomy beauty in their women; so that among this people nature seems to have kept itself up to its

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primitive and original perfection. Beside that universal likeness in them, proceeding from their conjugal fidelity and exclusion of all foreign mixture in their breed, where all the lineaments of their ancestors, direct and collateral, meet at last in their offspring, gives the parents the comfort of seeing their own bloom and youth renewed in their children, though in my opinion this universal likeness is rather a defect; not but the treasures of nature are so inexhaustible, that there are some distinguishing beauties in every face. Their young men and women meet frequently, but then 'tis in their publick assemblies, with grave people mixt along with them; at all publick exercises the women are placed in view to see and be seen, to enflame the young men with emulation in their performances. They are permitted to be decently familiar on those publick occasions, and can chuse their lovers respectively, according to their liking, there being no such thing as dowries, or interest, but mere personal merit in the case; but more of this in the next paragraph, where I shall speak more particularly of the education of their women and marriages."

From the observations of our Utopian legislator on the female sex, it may be conjectured that he had not a very high opinion of them; indeed he seldom loses an opportunity of giving them a sly hit. The women, he says, caused the governors most trouble of any thing in the commonwealth, so that they were obliged to have frequent consultations on the mode in which they ought to be treated. The most effectual method after all was found to be, to make marriage esteemed the happiest state that could be wished in this life: and as they animated their young men to glory, by all ways capable of stirring up generous minds, they did the same with the women, by means adapted to their genius. And he continues,

"There is a peculiar method allowed by them, in which they differ from all other nations; for whereas other nations endeavour to preserve their young people from love, lest they should throw themselves away, or make disadvantageous matches, these people having no interested views in that respect, encourage a generous and honourable love, and make it their care to fix them in the strictest love they can, as soon as they judge by their age and constitution how they are inclined; this they do sometimes by applauding them on their choice, but mostly by raising vast difficulties, contrived on purpose both to try and enhance their constancy. They have histories and stories of heroic examples of fidelity and constancy in both sexes, but particularly for the young women, by which they are taught rather to suffer ten thousand deaths than violate their plighted faith; one may say, they are a nation of faithful lovers, the longer they live together the more their friendship encreases; and infidelity in either sex is looked upon as a capital crime. Add to this, that being all of the same rank and quality, except the regard paid to eldership and public employments, nothing but personal merit and a liking of each other determines the choice. There must be signal proofs produced that the

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