The system and principle of that government is locality.

Their laws, their manners, their religion are all local.
Their legislator, whoever he was, (for who he was is a matter lost in the mists of a most obscure antiquity,) had it as a great leading principle of his policy to connect the people with their soil.
Accordingly, by one of those anomalies which a larger acquaintance with our species daily discovers, and which perhaps an attentive reflection might explain in the nature of man, this aboriginal people of India,--who are the softest in their manners of any of our race, approaching almost to feminine tenderness,--who are formed constitutionally benevolent, and, in many particulars, made to fill a larger circle of benevolence than our morals take in,--who extend their good-will to the whole animal creation,--these people are, of all nations, the most unalliable to any other part of mankind.

They cannot, the highest orders of them, at least, cannot, come into contact with any other.

That bond which is one of the chief instruments of society, and which, supporting the individual, connects the species, can have no existence with them: I mean the convivial bond.

That race can be held to no other by that great link of life.