I do not arrogate to myself the whole merit of this noble invention. Dr Price and Mr Godwin, in divers elaborate works, especially the latter, in his Political Justice, suggested some ideas which set my ingenuity in such a ferment, that I could not rest quietly till I had brewed a sublime treatise on the best mode of pulling down, repairing, and rebuilding decayed and worn out animal machines.
I shall not attempt, in this place, to oblige your worships with anything like a table of the contents of this judicious and profound performance. I will, however, gratify your curiosity so far as to glance cursorily at a few of the leading topics therein discussed and illustrated, and slightly mention some of the immense advantages which will be the result of this discovery.
In the first place, I make it apparent, by a long series of experiments and scientific deductions, drawn therefrom, that it is very practicable to enlighten the mind of a stupid fellow, by battering, boring, or pulling his body to pieces.—Mr poet Waller’s authority is here to my purpose, who tells us, that
“The soul’s dark cottage batter’d and decay’d,
Lets in new light through chinks which time has made.”
Mr Gray, likewise, in his Hymn to Adversity, requests that “Daughter of Jove” to impose gently her “iron hand,” and trouble him a little with her “torturing hour,” although he appears disposed to avoid, if possible, her more dismal accompaniments, such as her “Gorgonic frown,” and the “funereal cry of horror.”
The Spaniards, under Cortes and Pizarro, managed much in the same way, and enlightened the natives of the mighty empires of Peru and Mexico in the great truths of Christianity, by killing a part, reducing the remainder to a state of servitude, and battering their souls’ cottages at their leisure. This process is in part expressed in a poetical epistle, which I received not long since from my correspondent settled at Terra del Fuego, in South America, who thus expresses the conduct of some of his acquaintance, in converting the aborigines to Christianity.
Good folks to America came
To curtail old Satan’s dominions;
The natives, the more to their shame,