e, without vice or misery.

The North American Indians, considered as a people, cannot justly be
called free and equal. In all the accounts we have of them, and,
indeed, of most other savage nations, the women are represented as much
more completely in a state of slavery to the men than the poor are to
the rich in civilized countries. One half the nation appears to act as
Helots to the other half, and the misery that checks population falls
chiefly, as it always must do, upon that part whose condition is lowest
in the scale of society. The infancy of man in the simplest state
requires considerable attention, but this necessary attention the women
cannot give, condemned as they are to the inconveniences and hardships
of frequent change of place and to the constant and unremitting
drudgery of preparing every thing for the reception of their tyrannic
lords. These exertions, sometimes during pregnancy or with children at
their backs, must occasion frequent miscarriages, and prevent any but
the most robust infants from growing to maturity. Add to these
hardships of the women the constant war that prevails among savages,
and the necessity which they frequently labour under of exposing their
aged and helpless parents, and of thus violating the first feelings of
nature, and the picture will not appear very free from the blot of
misery. In estimating the happiness of a savage nation, we must not fix
our eyes only on the warrior in the prime of life: he is one of a
hundred: he is the gentleman, the man of fortune, the chances have been
in his favour and many efforts have failed ere this fortunate being was
produced, whose guardian genius should preserve him through the
numberless dangers with which he would be surrounded from infancy to
manhood. The true points of comparison between two nations seem to be
the ranks in each which appear nearest to answer to each other. And in
this view, I should compare the warriors in the prime of life with the
gentlemen, and the women, children, and aged, with the lower classes of
the community in civilized states.

May we not then fairly infer from this short review, or rather, from
the accounts that may be referred to of nations of hunters, that their
population is thin from the scarcity of food, that it would immediately
increase if food was in greater plenty, and that, putting vice out of
the question among savages, misery is the check that represses the
superior power of population and kee