Thus All Sects Are Mixed As Well As All Nations; Thus
Religious Indifference Is Imperceptibly Disseminated From One End Of
The Continent To The Other; Which Is At Present One Of The Strongest
Characteristics Of The Americans.
Where this will reach no one can
tell, perhaps it may leave a vacuum fit to receive other systems.
Persecution, religious pride, the love of contradiction, are the
food of what the world commonly calls religion.
These motives have
ceased here; zeal in Europe is confined; here it evaporates in the
great distance it has to travel; there it is a grain of powder
inclosed, here it burns away in the open air, and consumes without
effect.
But to return to our back settlers. I must tell you, that there is
something in the proximity of the woods, which is very singular. It
is with men as it is with the plants and animals that grow and live
in the forests; they are entirely different from those that live in
the plains. I will candidly tell you all my thoughts but you are not
to expect that I shall advance any reasons. By living in or near the
woods, their actions are regulated by the wildness of the
neighbourhood. The deer often come to eat their grain, the wolves to
destroy their sheep, the bears to kill their hogs, the foxes to
catch their poultry. This surrounding hostility immediately puts the
gun into their hands; they watch these animals, they kill some; and
thus by defending their property, they soon become professed
hunters; this is the progress; once hunters, farewell to the plough.
The chase renders them ferocious, gloomy, and unsociable; a hunter
wants no neighbour, he rather hates them, because he dreads the
competition.
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