o the most
refined, has its own peculiar evils to mark it as the condition of
mortality; and perhaps there is none but omnipotence who can say in
which the scale of good or evil most preponderates. We need say nothing
of the evils of savage life. There is a state of society elevated
somewhat above it, which is to be found in some of the more thinly
peopled portions of our own country--the rudest agricultural
state--which is thus characterized by the author to whom I have
referred: "The American of the back woods has often been described to
the English as grossly ignorant, dirty, unsocial, delighting in rum and
tobacco, attached to nothing but his rifle, adventurous, restless, more
than half savage. Deprived of social enjoyments or excitements, he has
recourse to those of savage life, and becomes (for in this respect the
Americans degenerate) unfit for society." This is no very inviting
picture, which, though exaggerated, we know not to be without likeness.
The evils of such a state, I suppose, will hardly be thought compensated
by unbounded freedom, perfect equality, and ample means of subsistence.

But let us take another stage in the progress--which to many will appear
to offer all that is desirable in existence, and realize another Utopia.
Let us suppose a state of society in which all shall have property, and
there shall be no great inequality of property--in which society shall
be so much condensed as to afford the means of social intercourse,
without being crowded, so as to create difficulty in obtaining the means
of subsistence--in which every family that chooses may have as much land
as will employ its own hands, while others may employ their industry in
forming such products as it may be desirable to exchange with them.
Schools are generally established, and the rudiments of education
universally diffused. Religion is taught, and every village has its
church, neat, though humble, lifting its spire to heaven. Here is a
situation apparently the most favorable to happiness. I say
_apparently_, for the greatest source of human misery is not in external
circumstances, but in men themselves--in their depraved inclinations,
their wayward passions and perverse wills. Here is room for all the
petty competition, the envy, hatred, malice and dissimulation that
torture the heart in what may be supposed the most sophisticated states
of society; and though less marked and offensive, there may be much of
the licentiousness.