It remains to inquire whether this power can be checked, and
its effects kept equal to the means of subsistence, 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