ps the celebrated Mexican and
Peruvian empires; the Tartar hordes, and all those societies of people in
various parts of the globe, who, possessing personal property, and
acknowledging some species of established subordination, rise one step
above the Caribs, the New Hollanders, the Laplanders, and the Hottentots,
who exhibit a picture of mankind in its rudest and most humiliating
aspect.

FEW IMPROVEMENTS ADOPTED FROM EUROPEANS.

As mankind are by nature so prone to imitation it may seem surprising
that these people have not derived a greater share of improvement in
manners an arts from their long connection with Europeans, particularly
with the English, who have now been settled among them for a hundred
years. Though strongly attached to their own habits they are nevertheless
sensible of their inferiority, and readily admit the preference to which
our attainments in science, and especially in mechanics, entitle us. I
have heard a man exclaim, after contemplating the structure and uses of a
house-clock, "Is it not fitting that such as we should be slaves to
people who have the ingenuity to invent, and the skill to construct, so
wonderful a machine as this?" "The sun," he added, "is a machine of this
nature." "But who winds it up?" said his companion. "Who but Allah," he
replied. This admiration of our superior attainments is however not
universal; for, upon an occasion similar to the above, a Sumatran
observed, with a sneer, "How clever these people are in the art of
getting money."

Some probable causes of this backwardness may be suggested. We carry on
few or no species of manufacture at our settlements; everything is
imported ready wrought to its highest perfection; and the natives
therefore have no opportunity of examining the first process, or the
progress of the work. Abundantly supplied with every article of
convenience from Europe, and prejudiced in their favour because from
thence, we make but little use of the raw materials Sumatra affords. We
do not spin its cotton; we do not rear its silkworms; we do not smelt its
metals; we do not even hew its stone: neglecting these, it is in vain we
exhibit to the people, for their improvement in the arts, our rich
brocades, our timepieces, or display to them in drawings the elegance of
our architecture. Our manners likewise are little calculated to excite
their approval and imitation. Not to insist on the licentiousness that
has at times been imputed to our communiti