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The Cosmopolite.

No. III.-THURSDAY, APRIL 30, 1812.

NATIONAL IMPROVEMENT.-ITS CONNEXION

WITH NATIONAL FREEDOM.

THE progress of national improvement is one of the

most interesting objects of human investigation: it is as useful too, as it is interesting; for should the result of the enquiry prove us to be slower than others, in our advancement towards perfection, it will furnish us with an incitement to quicken and re-double our mental energies, while a contrary conviction will teach us to value the superior enlightenment we enjoy, and to apply it to a good and profitable purpose. It may not therefore be an idle employment to take an enlarged, though brief view of the present state of the several nations in the world, compare the progress of the intellectual character of each, and draw from thence deductions that may conduce to our moral improve

ment.

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The view, at first sight, is not very exhilarating; images of human debasement present themselves in every quarter of the globe, and thus frightened from a more close investigation, we turn back, like Ulysses in the realms of Pluto, to take a hasty, inquisitive glance at the dreary and disheartening prospect. Oppida quodam tempore florentissima, nunc prostrata et diruta ante oculos jacent.

On one side we perceive the vast peninsula of Africa still immersed in barbarian darkness; Egypt, the nurse of the sciences, the land of ancient plenty, and the grand source of civilization, having sunk into the deepest degradation. Greece, the country where philosophy and freedom once so conspicuously flourished, forms now nothing more than an oppressed and unenlightened province of despotism; while Syria, formerly the garden of the world, the spot from whence chivalry and science returned to Europe in modern times, to purge it of Gothic superstition and ferocity, still remains locked in the arms of morbid debility, drained and exhausted, by the relentless exactions of tyranny.-If we extend our view still farther to the east, we find no consolation în the prospect. From the Danube to the Ganges, from the sea of Asoph to the Southern Ocean, the curse of à debilitating superstition creeps through the frame of .oriental policy, diseases all the energies of exertion and palsies all the emanations of intellect. India alone, from whence it is possible that man drew his birth, scatters. some few gleams of hope, over the accumulated mass of -mental darkness.-Seated as she is, amidst the ruin of her vast pagodas and her innumerable temples, which

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recal in strong characters the memory of the past, the time will come perhaps when she will give birth to another empire; and, led by the hand of European civilization, arouse the energies of philosophy to rival her ancient glories.

A view of China at this moment is peculiarly interesting to the philosophic eye, contrasted as that country appears, with the vast deserts of Tartary which skirt its frontiers. We behold them a people divisos toto orbe, as it was anciently said of Britain-aiming by their own energies at a pitch of civilization, which if not equal to European attainments, is at least much superior to the boasted improvement of the latter Roman empire. We behold them possessing for ages before they were known in Europe, the arts of printing, of making gunpowder, of porcelain, of mechanical and agricultural improvements; we behold their legislators promulgating a system of laws, which, if not the most perfect in the abstract, are certainly the best adapted to the state of their internal society, and at the same time xpressed in so comprehensive and so explicit a language, as should make the legislators of Europe blusa for their refinements on prolixity, and their skill in distoring the plain features of common sense.-Finally we behold them realizing the hieroglyphical language of the Egypuans, in the midst of the same internal polity: the former resulting from the antiquity of the first association, the latter from the immense canals which intersect the country in every possible direction, uniting the population of the most distant provinces, and diffusing through the whole the blessings of an increasing

commerce. Such are the wonders produced by a people, who reject the aid and despise the attainments of European nations-thus demonstrating of what human nature is capable, when secured in the fruits of its industry by systematic policy, and undisturbed from the progress of its intellectual refinement by the miseries of wars and the spectres of revolutions.

In the vast continent of the new world, when the sanguine enthusiasm of the first adventurers imagined they had discovered the seat of paradise or the Atalantis of Plato, and when the eye of philosophy beheld one of the most interesting desiderata realized-the picture of man advancing from his first state of barbarity, through various degrees of civilization-in this vast continent too we search in vain for a more flattering confirmation of human progression. The north exhibits the mortifying spectacle of a state of society, as corrupt as under the most degenerated governments, existing under the first stage of a republic-a commonwealth in its infancy: while in the south we behold the miserable picture of an immense population crushed and lethargized in its intellectual operations, by a despotism as contemptibe as uncontroled.

In Europe alone, the grand palladium of intellect remains as yet unsullied and secure. In Europe alone exists, if I may use the metaphor, the grand ailometer by which we may calculate the rise and progress of these improvements which are destined to exalt our senses and ameliorate our morals.-But even in this. last corner of the world, in this sanctuary of intellect, reflection stands astonished, at the new spectacle of a

gigantic despotism, turning the suicidal arm of philosophy against her own bosom, and introducing a species of philosophical machinery into education, which is, like the Trojan horse, big with d.struction to the great republic of letters. We behold it wielding the incontrovertible principle, that men are the children of habit, and moulding them on that principle, to become the champions of a worse than gothic barbarity. We behold it in the fixed pursuit of their unnatural design, descending to the most contemptible duplicity, garbling the works of the critics, distorting the mirror of history, and attempting to bury in oblivion the records of ancient heroism and ancient philosophy.

It is not without alarm, indeed, that reflecting men behold the encroachments now making on the mental energies of neighbouring countries. Their system of rendering the rising generation of men a race of military adventurers, threatens to rend up philosophy and science by the roots. It is, therefore, idle to say, that philosophy and the arts are arrived at their most flourishing era on the opposite side of the Channel,-for it is impossible that they can arrive at that state, when nursed in the lap of despotism. They may possess the healthy exterior; but all is hollow beneath. The bloom of their apparent energy is but the hectic flush of consumption. Intellect can only thrive in the soil of freedom. It is in vain to appeal to the Augustan age in support of the opposite opinion. The peaceful reign of Augustus succeeded a period of revolutionary horror, scarcely surpassed, in blackness of dye, by modern atrocities when proscription followed proscription,