We shall endeavor to exhibit, though on a small scale, and perhaps not with a very strict regularity of proportion and arrangement, a faithful representation of the most serious of the evils conspicuous in an uneducated state of the people. Much of the description and reflections must be equally applicable to other countries; for spite of all their mutual antipathies and hostilities, and numberless contrarieties of customs and fashions, they have been wonderfully content to resemble one another in the worst national feature, a deformed condition of their people. But it is here at home that this condition is the most painfully forced on our attention; and here also of all the world it is, that such a wretched exhibition is the severest reproach to the nation for having suffered its existence.
The subject is to the last degree unattractive, except to a misanthropic disposition; or to that, perhaps, of a stern theological polemic, when tempted to be pleased with every superfluity of evidence for overwhelming the opposers of the doctrine which asserts the radical corruption of our nature. As spread over a coarse and repulsive moral and physical scenery, it is a subject in the extreme of contrast with that susceptibility of magnificent display, on account of which some of the most cruel evils that have preyed on mankind have ever been favorite themes with writers ambitious to shine in description. Nor does it present a wild and varying spectacle, where a crowd of fantastic shapes (as in a view of the pagan superstitions,) may stimulate and beguile the imagination though we know we are looking on a great evil. It is a gloomy monotony; Death without his dance. Moreover, the representation which exhibits one large class degraded and unhappy, reflects ungraciously, and therefore repulsively, by an imputation of neglect of duty, on the other classes who are called upon to look at the spectacle. There is, besides, but little power of arresting the attention in a description of familiar matter of fact, plain to every one's observation. Yet ought it not to be so much the better, when we are pleading for a certain mode of benevolent exertion, that every one can see, and that no one can deny, the sad reality of all that forms the object, and imposes the duty, of that exertion?