[26] It has been urged against the state of longevity in America, that the Europeans, who settle among us, generally arrive to a greater age than the Americans. This is not occasioned so much by a peculiar firmness in their stamina, as by an increase of vigour which the constitution acquires by a change of climate. A Frenchman (cæteris paribus) outlives an Englishman in England. A Hollander prolongs his life by removing to the Cape of Good Hope. A Portuguese gains fifteen or twenty years by removing to Brazil. And there are good reasons to believe, that a North-American would derive the same advantages, in point of health and longevity, by removing to Europe, which a European derives from coming to this country. From a calculation made by an ingenious foreigner, it appears, that a greater proportion of old people are to be found in Connecticut, than in any colony in North-America. This colony contains 180,000 inhabitants. They have no public hospitals or poor-houses; nor is a beggar to be seen among them. There cannot be more striking proofs than these facts of the simplicity of their manners. The laws of decency and nature are not necessarily abolished by the customs of civilized nations. In many of these, we read of women among whom nature alone still performs the office of a midwife[27], and who feel the obligations of suckling their children to be equally binding with the common obligations of morality. [27] Parturition, in the simple ages of all countries, is performed by nature. The Israelitish women were delivered even without the help of the Egyptian midwives. We read of but two women who died in child-birth in the whole history of the Jews. Dr. Bancroft says, that child-bearing is attended with so little pain in Guiana, that the women seem to be exempted from the curse inflicted upon Eve. These easy births are not confined to warm climates. They are equally safe and easy in Norway and Iceland, according to Pontoppidan and Anderson's histories of those countries. Civilization does not render us less fit for the necessary hardships of war. We read of armies of civilized nations, who have endured degrees of cold, hunger, and fatigue, which have not been exceeded by the savages of any country[28].