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[[center margin]]400 tions, consequently, guided by a cool policy, are never actuated by those furious, and deadly passions which inflame barbarian soldiers, and savage war- riors. Bearing but a small proportion to popula- tion of the country, the nation is but little affected by the individual fate of those who fall in battle. And armies are so constituted, that the loss of thou- sands of the common soldiery possesses but small in- terest in the sympathies of that class of society which chiefly influences the public measures, and gives the tone to the public feeling. If a few of better rank are slain in the field, their friends are consoled by the glory of their fall. But, among the savages of America, the same men who fight, decide the fate of the prisoners, and they do it with the same passions of with which they fought. They have no reasons of state, which induce nations to make war without passion. Their wars are the consequences of re- cent injuries keenly felt. Their armies, although small, bear a large proportion to their entire popula- tion. Every warrior stands in some relation of kindred to his whole tribe. And all who are slain in battle are lamented as brothers. No artificial sen- timents of glory serve to console the survivors; and they study only to quench their griefs, and their re- [[center margin]] 401 venge in the blood of their enemies. In the tortures they are preparing for their miserable victims, they see only the gratification of their own vengeance, and the torments which would have been destined for themselves if the chance of battle had thrown them into the hands of their prisoners. This re- flection serves to inflame their rage; and they mu- tual instigations when assembled round this horrid sacrifice, to avenge their slaughtered brothers, and the injuries meditated against themselves excite their pas- sions to the wildest fury. They make a festival of cruelty. In the midst of shouts and yells, and those wild and frantic gestures by which they express, at once, their exultation, and their rage, every emotion of humanity and sympathy, if it should happen to rise in their breasts, is effectually extinguished. There is, indeed, a kind of wantonness in cruelty which forms a part of the character of the American savage, that resembles the pleasure which chil- dren are often seen to take in the writhings and convulsions of the inferior animals subjected to their persecutions and torments. A savage is, in many respects, little more than a grown child. But in the moment of victory and triumph, in their bar- barous carousals, and the wild frolic of all their [[center margin]] 3 B
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Reopened for Editing 2023-06-05 11:48:56