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hazard, by an attempt to examine the country in which he lives, with a view to increase commerce or knowlege; it is not lawful to risk the life of our own people in carrying on commerce with countries already known. If it be said that the risk of life in our own people is voluntary, and that the Indian is brought into danger without his consent, the consequence will still follow; for it is universally agreed, at least upon the principles of Christianity, that men have no more right over their own lives than over the lives of others, and suicide being deemed the worst species of murder, a man must be proportionably criminal in exposing his own life, for any purpose that would not justify his exposing the life of another. If the gratification of artificial wants, or the increase of knowlege, are justifiable causes for the risk of life, the landing by force on a newly discovered country, in order to examine its produce, may be justified; if not, every trade and profession that exposes life for advantages of the same kind is unlawful; and by what trade or profession is not life exposed? Let us examine all the multitudes that art has employed, from the refiner who sweats at the furnace to the sedentary artificer who grows pale at the loom, and perhaps none can be found in which life is not in some degree sacrificed to the artificial necessities of civil society. But will it therefore be said, that civil society, to which this sacrifice is made, is for that reason a combination contrary to the great original principles of morality, which are the basis of all duty? Will it be said, that to exercise the faculties which are the distinguishing characteristics of our nature is unnatural? and that being endowed with the various powers which in civil societies only can be brought into action, it was incongruous to the will of our Creator that any such society should be formed, and that it would be pleasing to him if, still continuing in a savage state, these powers should
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Voyaging Accounts |  |
© Derived from Volume I of the London 1773 Edition: National Library of Australia call no. FERG 7243, page xvii, 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
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