In the sciences and the fine arts, the power of ex celling in which depends upon rare combinations of circumstances, to limit the number of competitors. and shut up the field from all but the members of a particular tribe, is obviously a powerful expedient for diminishing the chance of progression. In regard to literature and knowledge the case is clear and deci sive. To confine the prosecution of it to a particular tribe, is to insure a perpetuity of ignorance and misery to the human race. It will be decidedly the interest of the knowing class to maintain as much ignorance as possible among the rest of the community, that they may be able the more easily to turn and wind them conformable to their own purposes ; and, for that end, to study, pot real knowledge, not the means of making mankind wiser and happier, but the •means of deluding and imposing upon them ; the arts of imposture. With this and incontrovertible inference, how exactly does the historical fact cor reneimai t now truly end fidthfully him the Rude. ' men acted to then rule 1 They have made it a Ism revealed from heave* to keep the great bulk of the community in ignorance. And what branch of knowledge have they ever studied but the scienoe of delusion ? There as first their theology ; a mass of absurd fictions to chain the imagination of ig norant and foolish men. And then there is astro logy, which concludes the circle of all-their audit% and may be justly styled the " Second Part: of the Act of Imposture ;" even their mathematics, in which they made some little progress, being studied in no other shape than as • part of the business of circumstance appears to merit no slight regard. The institution of castes is calculated to multiply the evils, so dreadful in magnitude, which - are apt to arise from the principles of population, and is opposed to the measures which are calculated to lessen or prevent them. The evils which are apt to be produced by an occasional superabundance of people in any one of the departments of industry and subsistence, are exceedingly diminished, when the greatest possible facility is given to the supernu nasty individuals, of distributing themselves through ail the other departments of industry and subsistence.
And these evils, it is obvious, are all raised to the greatest height when the of that distribu ton is taken away ; and individuals is Whatsoever de superabundant, are still confined to their own As this is atopic, the elucidation of which is easy to carry on; we shall content ourselves with, the bare hint which has thus been given, and leave the development to the redisetions of the reader.
It may be added, as it supplement to what was said about the obstruction which, by the institution of castes, is Owen to progression, not only in the division of la "War and the multiplication of arta but even in perfecting the arts which are known and practised, that the strict confinement of one tribe of men to one tribe of operations must have a strong tendency to create a habit of routine, and hence an ' aversion all innovation ; a disposition to ac quieece in what has constantly been done, as if it were that which ought to be constantly done ; and hence to deaden that activity of mind which is on the alert to catch at every chance of improvement,—that ad mirable temper, on which the greatest rapidity in the march of human amelioration essentially depends.
It was intended, after thus presenting the reasons on which we conclude that the institution of castes is an arrangement altogether opposite to the interests of human nature, to have stated and answered the reasons which have been advanced by Dr Robertson, .in the Appendix to his Historical Disressition Con cerning India, and very recently by the Abbe Du bois, an his Description of the Character, 8re. of the People of India, to prove that the institution of castes is really beneficial. But after looking aver these reasonings, with a view to that answer, they have ap peared to us to be AO weak and insignificant, as to be altogether unworthy , the trouble of transcription. A sufficient answer to every point which they adduce, wilt be found in. the considerations which we have already. urged upon the subject;. and we doubt not, that we may safely. intrust the decision to the judg ment, of the reader. (r. n)