of errours produced by ignorance and supported by interested fraud. Theological inquiries are no part of my present fubject; but I cannot refrain from adding, that the collection of tracts, which we call from their excellence the Scriptures, contain, independently of a divine origin, more true fublimity, more. exquisite beauty, purer morality, more important hiftory, and finer strains both of poetry and eloquence, than could be collected within the fame compass from all other books, that were ever compofed in idiom. The two parts, of any age or in any which the Scriptures confift, are connected by a chain of compofitions, which bear no refemblance in form or ftyle to any that can be produced from the ftores of Grecian, Indian, Perfian, or even Arabian, learning: the antiquity of those compofitions no man doubts; and the unftrained application of them to events long subsequent to their publication is a folid ground of belief, that they were genuine predictions, and consequently inspired; but, if any thing be the abfolute exclusive property of each individual, it is his belief; and, I hope, I fhould be one of the last men living, who could harbour a thought of obtruding my own belief on the free minds of others. I mean only to affume, what, I trust, will be readily conceded, that the first Hebrew hiftorian must be entitled, merely as fuch, to an

equal degree of credit, in his account of all civil transactions, with any other historian of antiquity: how far that most ancient writer confirms the refult of our inquiries into the genealogy of nations, I propofe to show at our next anniversary meeting; when, after an approach to demonstration, in the strict method of the old analysis, I fhall refume the whole argument concisely and synthetically; and shall then have condensed in seven difcourfes a mass of evidence, which, if brevity had not been my object, might have been expanded into seven large volumes with no other trouble than that of holding the pen; but (to borrow a turn of expreffion from one of our poets) " for what I “have produced, I claim only your indulgence; "it is for what I have fuppreffed, that I am "entitled to your thanks."

DISCOURSE THE NINTH.

ON

THE ORIGIN AND FAMILIES OF NATIONS.

DELIVERED 23 FEBRUARY, 1792,

BY

THE PRESIDENT.

YOU have attended, gentlemen, with fo much indulgence to my difcourfes on the five Afiatick nations, and on the various tribes eftablished along their several borders or interspersed over their mountains, that I cannot but flatter myself with an affurance of being heard with equal attention, while I trace to one centre the three great families, from which those nations appear to have proceeded, and then hazard a few conjectures on the different courfes, which they may be fuppofed to have taken toward the countries, in which we find them fettled at the dawn of all genuine history.

Let us begin with a short review of the propofitions, to which we have gradually been led, and separate such as are morally certain, from fuch as are only probable: that the first race of

Perfians and Indians, to whom we may add the Romans and Greeks, the Goths, and the old Egyptians or Ethiops, originally spoke the fame language and profeffed the fame popular faith, is capable, in my humble opinion, of incontestable proof; that the Jews and Arabs, the Affyrians, or second Persian race, the people who spoke Syriack, and a numerous tribe of Abyffinians, used one primitive dialect wholly diftinct from the idiom just mentioned, is, I believe, undifputed, and, I am fure, indifputable; but that the fettlers in China and Japan had a common origin with the Hindus, is no more than highly probable; and, that all the Tartars, as they are inaccurately called, were primarily of a third feparate branch, totally differing from the two others in language, manners, and features, may indeed be plaufibly conjectured, but cannot, for the reasons alledged in a former effay, be perfpicuously shown, and for the present therefore must be merely affumed. Could these facts be verified by the best attainable evidence, it would not, I prefume, be doubted, that the whole earth was peopled by a variety of shoots from the Indian, Arabian, and Tartarian branches, or by such intermixtures of them, as, in a course of ages, might naturally have happened.

Now I admit without hesitation the aphorifm of LINNEUS, that "in the beginning GoD

"created one pair only of every living species, "which has a diverfity of fex;" but, fince that incomparable naturalist argues principally from the wonderful diffufion of vegetables, and from an hypothefis, that the water on this globe has been continually fubfiding, I venture to produce a fhorter and clofer argument in fupport of his doctrine. That Nature, of which fimplicity appears a distinguishing attribute, does nothing in vain, is a maxim in philofophy; and against those, who deny maxims, we cannot dispute; but it is vain and fuperfluous to do by many means what may be done by fewer, and this is another axiom received into courts of judicature from the schools of philofophers: we must not, therefore, fays our great NEWTON, admit more caufes of natural things, than thofe, which are true, and fufficiently account for natural phenomena; but it is true, that one pair at least of every living fpecies must at first have been created; and that one human pair was fufficient for the population of our globe in a period of no confiderable length (on the very moderate fuppofition of lawyers and political arithmeticians, that every pair of ancestors left on an average two children, and each of them two more), is evident from the rapid increase of numbers in geometrical progreffion, so well known to those, who have ever taken the trouble to fum a feries