thought not safe or scarcely decent to permit a young man and maid to be
together in private anywhere. But in this quarter of the old world the
viciousness of the one, and the simplicity of the other, are the result
merely of education and habit. It seems to be a part of heroism, among
the polished nations of it, to sacrifice the virtuous fair one, whenever
an opportunity offers, and thence it is concluded that the same
principles actuate those of the new world. It is egregiously absurd to
judge all of all countries by one. In Spain, Portugal and Italy,
jealousy reigns; in France, England, and Holland, suspicion; in the West
and East Indies, lust; in New England, superstition. These four blind
deities govern Jews, Turks, Christians, infidels, and heathen.
Superstition is the most amiable. She sees no vice with approbation but
persecution, and self-preservation is the cause of her seeing that. My
insular readers will, I hope, believe me, when I tell them that I have
seen, in the West Indies, naked boys and girls, some fifteen or sixteen
years of age, waiting at table and at tea, even when twenty or thirty
virtuous English ladies were in the room; who were under no more
embarrassment at such an awful sight in the eyes of English people that
have not traveled abroad, than they would have been at the sight of so
many servants in livery. Shall we censure the ladies of the West Indies
as vicious above all their sex, on account of this local custom? By no
means; for long experience has taught the world that the West Indian
white ladies are virtuous prudes. Where superstition reigns, fanaticism
will be minister of state; and the people, under the taxation of zeal,
will shun what is commonly called vice, with ten times more care than
the polite and civilized Christians, who know what is right and what is
wrong from reason and revelation. Happy would it be for the world, if
reason and revelation were suffered to control the mind and passions of
the great and wise men of the earth, as superstition does that of the
simple and less polished! When America shall erect societies for the