nature, a kind parent, who for the benefit of mankind has taken
singular pains to vary the genera of plants, fruits, grain, and the
different productions of the earth; and has spread peculiar
blessings in each climate. This is undoubtedly an object of
contemplation which calls forth our warmest gratitude; for so
singularly benevolent have those parental intentions been, that
where barrenness of soil or severity of climate prevail, there she
has implanted in the heart of man, sentiments which overbalance
every misery, and supply the place of every want. She has given to
the inhabitants of these regions, an attachment to their savage
rocks and wild shores, unknown to those who inhabit the fertile
fields of the temperate zone. Yet if we attentively view this globe,
will it not appear rather a place of punishment, than of delight?
And what misfortune! that those punishments should fall on the
innocent, and its few delights be enjoyed by the most unworthy.
Famine, diseases, elementary convulsions, human feuds, dissensions,
etc., are the produce of every climate; each climate produces
besides, vices, and miseries peculiar to its latitude. View the
frigid sterility of the north, whose famished inhabitants hardly
acquainted with the sun, live and fare worse than the bears they
hunt: and to which they are superior only in the faculty of
speaking. View the arctic and antarctic regions, those huge voids,
where nothing lives; regions of eternal snow: where winter in all
his horrors has established his throne, and arrested every creative
power of nature. Will you call the miserable stragglers in these
countries by the name of men? Now contrast this frigid power of the
north and south with that of the sun; examine the parched lands of
the torrid zone, replete with sulphureous exhalations; view those
countries of Asia subject to pestilential infections which lay
nature waste; view this globe often convulsed both from within and