Here is one great motive, for good conduct and decorous manners, obliterated. The good opinion of his neighbours is of little consequence to him, who can scarce be said to have any. If a man keeps free of those crimes which a regard for the public safety compels the magistrate to punish, he finds shelter in every forest from the scorn and dislike incurred by petty trespasses on society. There all who are unwilling to submit to the restraints of law and religion, may live unchallenged, at a distance from the public exercise of either. There all whom want has made desperate, whether it be the want of abilities, of character, or the means to live, are sure to take shelter. This habit of removing furnishes, however, a palliation for some evils, for the facility with which they change residence, becomes the means of ridding the community of members too turbulent or too indolent to be quiet or useful. It is a kind of voluntary exile, where those whom government want power and efficiency to banish, very obligingly banish themselves; thus preventing the explosion which might be occasioned by their continuing mingled in the general mass. It is owing to this salutary discharge of peccant humours that matters go on so quietly as they do, under a government which is neither feared nor loved, by the community it rules. These removals are incredibly frequent; for the same family, flying as it were before the face of legal authority and civilization, are often known to remove farther and farther back into the woods, every fifth or sixth year, as the population begins to draw nearer. By this secession from society, a partial reformation is in some cases effected. A person incapable of regular industry and compliance with its established customs, will certainly do least harm, when forced to depend on his personal exertions. When a man places himself in the situation of Robinson Crusoe, with the difference of a wife and children for that solitary hero’s cats and parrots, he must of necessity make exertions like his, or perish. He becomes not a regular husbandman, but a hunter, with whom agriculture is but a secondary consideration. His Indian corn, and potatoes, which constitute the main part of his crop, are, in due time, hoed by his wife and daughters; while the axe and the gun are the only implements he willingly handles.