s of society; and for this reason, we find it naturally
banished from every people as soon as civilization has made any
progress among them. But though we are too much polished to be
cannibals, we do not find it unnaturally and savagely cruel to take
the field, and to cut one another's throats by thousands, without a
single motive, besides the ambition of a prince, or the caprice of his
mistress! Is it not from prejudice that we are disgusted with the idea
of eating a dead man, when we feel no remorse in depriving him of
life? If the practice of eating human flesh makes men unfeeling and
brutal, we have instances that civilized people, who would, perhaps,
like some of our sailors, have turned sick at the thought of eating
human flesh, have committed barbarities, without example, amongst
cannibals. A New Zealander, who kills and eats his enemy, is a very
different being from an European, who, for his amusement, tears an
infant from the mother's breast, in cool blood, and throws it on the
earth, to feed his hounds,--an atrocious crime, which Bishop Las Casas
says, he saw committed in America by Spanish soldiers. The New
Zealanders never eat their adversaries unless they are killed in
battle; they never kill their relations for the purpose of eating
them; they do not even eat them if they die of a natural death, and
they take no prisoners with a view to fatten them for their repast;
though these circumstances have been related, with more or less truth,
of the American Indians. It is therefore not improbable, that in
process of time, they will entirely lay aside this custom; and the
introduction of new domestic animals into their country might hasten
that period, since greater affluence would tend to make them more
sociable. Their religion does not seem likely to be an obstacle,
because from what we could judge, they are not remarkably
superstitious, and it is only among very bigotted nations that the
custom of offering human flesh to the gods, has prevailed after
civilization."--These are evidently hasty speculations, and by no
means conclusive, but they point with tolerable clearness to some
principle of human nature adequate, independent of necessity, to
account for the practice, and shew in what manner the investigation
into its nature, causes, and remedy, ought to be carried on.--E.