cafe with every barbarous people* With fuch, force is law. The ftronger fex therefore impofes on the weaker. It is civiUzation alone which replaces women in the enjoyment of their natural equality. That firfl teaches us to fudue the felfifh pafGons, and to refpeft thofe rights in others which we value in ourfelves. Were we in equal barbarifm, our females would be equal drudges. The man with them is lefs ftrong than with us, but their women ftronger than ours; and both for the fame obvious reafon; becaufe our man and their woman is habituated to labour, and formed by it. With both races the fex which is indulged with eafe is leaft athletic. An Indian man is fmall in the hand and wrift, for the fame reafon for which a failor is large and ftrong in the ^rms and ihoulders, and a porter in the legs and thighs. They raife fewer children than we do. The caufes of this are to be found, not in a difference of nature, but of circumftance. The women very frequently attending the men in their parties of war and of hunting, child-bearing becomes extremely in- convenient to them. It is faid, therefore, that they have learned the praftice of pro- curing abortion by the ufe of fome vegetable; and that it even extends to prevent conception for a confiderable time after.
During thefe parties they are expofed to numerous hazards, to exccffive exertions, to the greateft extremities of hunger. Even at their homes the nation depends for food, through a certain part of every year, on the gleanings of the foreft: that is, they experience a famine once in every year. With all animals, if the female be badly fed, or not fed at all, her young perifli: and if both male and female be re- duced to like want, generation becomes lefs adtive, lefs produ<Stive. To the obfta- cles then of want and hazard, which na- ture has oppofed to the multiplication of