[Footnote 14:  If it be considered that in Otaheite women are very early marriageable, and that families are easily reared, one will not find cause for censuring the impolicy, whatever is thought of the immodesty, according to our notions, of the kind of dances here mentioned.  It seems reasonable enough, that the girls should be instructed in the only arts requisite to obtain the affections of the other sex.  Can it be said, that the system of female education established in our own country, is half so judicious, which prescribes a series of instructions in drawing and music, velvet-painting, &c. to girls who, it is morally certain, will never have the least occasion for them, and who, whatever excellence they attain, totally abandon them on the day they happen to change their names?  Or shall we say, these things are like the gestures of the Otaheitan damsels, merely symbols used as snares for the careless beaux, who pretend to taste and fashion, and indicative of the indolence and extravagance which are to succeed the marriage ceremony?  The fact is, and it is foolish to attempt concealing it, that women in general have a nature so ductile as to be quite readily fashioned to any model which is conceived agreeable to the other sex, and that they all have sufficient sagacity to practise the arts in demand, till they have accomplished the destiny of their constitution.  On the supposition that these arts are equally commensurate to their object, it may well be asked, why some should be condemned and not others—­or what authority any people have to reproach the current allurements of another?  In the eyes of an impartial spectator, if we can suppose there really is one, all of them must appear alike as to nature and origin, and to differ only in respect of adaptation to the ends in view.  He would consider them all as signs, merely more or less expressive, and might be induced to censure most strongly, if he censured at all, the people who, in using them, affected the closest concealment of the purposes intended by them.  A philosopher ought never to lose sight of this maxim, that human nature is essentially the same throughout the world, and that all the desires and passions belonging to it have the same origin, and are equally good or bad as to morality; from which it follows, that customs and manners are to be judged of not so much by what is known or imagined of the sources of them, as by what is evident or may be discovered of their effects on society.  On this principle, it is strictly demonstrable, that in such a state of things as exists in our own country at present, certain appearances and modes of dress adopted by our women, are actually more injurious, and of course more criminal, than the dancing gestures mentioned in the text.  Any lady that can expose her breasts to the gaze of one and all of our public companies, has an undoubted right to be considered as possessing the same feelings and propensities as the lewd girls of Otaheite; but then