Page:Notes on the State of Virginia (1802).djvu/337

Rh ſo admired, that it flew through all the public papers of the continent, and through the magazines and other periodical publications of Great-Britain; and thoſe who were boys at that day will now atteſt, that the ſpeech of Logan uſed to be given them as a ſchool exerciſe for repetition. It was not till about thirteen or fourteen years after the newspaper publications, that the Notes on Virginia were publiſhed in America. Combating, in theſe, the contumelious theory of certain European writers, whoſe celebrity gave currency and weight to their opinions, that our country, from the combined effects of ſoil and climate, degenerated animal nature. In the general, and particularly the moral faculties of man, I conſidered the ſpeech of Logan as an apt proof of the contrary, and uſed it as ſuch; and I copied, verbatim, the narrative I had taken down in 1774, and the ſpeech as it had been given us in a better tranſlation by lord Dunmore. I knew nothing of the Creſaps, and could not poſſibly have a motive to do them an injury with deſign. I repeated what thouſands had done before, on as good authority as we have for moſt of the facts we learn through life, and ſuch as, to this moment, I have ſeen no reaſon to doubt. That any body queſtioned it, was never ſuſpected by me, till I ſaw the letter of Mr. Martin in the Baltimore paper. I endeavored then to recollect who among my cotemporaries, of the ſame circle of ſociety, and conſequently of the ſame recollections, might ſtill be alive. Three and twenty years of death and diſperſion had left very few. I remembered, however, that general Gibſon was ſtill living, and