[Footnote 3:  Of this there can be no doubt, if the assertions of those who have tried it be entitled to credit.  When the reluctance, then, to use it is once overcome, there is no reason to think it would ever be abandoned, if it could be safely and conveniently procured.  We have instances of this on record.  Some persons necessitated, let us allow, to have recourse to it, have continued the practice, where the doing so required the repeated commission of murder.  We formerly alluded to instances of this kind, and we see in the case of the people before us, that hunger is not the only motive for so abominable a repast.  Admitting even that it were the original one, we should expect the practice to be relinquished whenever other food was to be had in sufficient quantity.  But this we know by many proofs is not the case; and perhaps, indeed, it will be found, that this odium is fully as prevalent in savage countries, where nature has been bountiful, as in those where a more stinted hand has inflicted poverty on the inhabitants.  The causes, then, and the remedies of this most shocking enormity, are to be looked for in other circumstances than the scarcity or the profusion of food.  Here we may be allowed to join in opinion with Dr Robertson.  “Human flesh was never used as common food in any country, and the various relations concerning people who reckoned it among the stated means of subsistence, flow from the credulity and mistakes of travellers.  The rancour of revenge first prompted men to this barbarous action.”  In addition to his opinion and that of the authors quoted by him, in his History of America, lib. 4, the reader may advantageously consult Dr Forster’s Observations.  If the sentiments maintained by these writers be correct, we may expect to find cannibalism in almost every country where the spirit of revenge is not curbed by principle, or directed by the authority of a well-organized government.  Here the evidence of these voyages and of others which we could mention, must be allowed considerable importance.  There is the strongest reason, indeed, to believe that the inhabitants of all the South Sea islands are now chargeable with this inhumanity, or are but recently recovered from its dominion.  We might easily enlarge on this subject, but what has been said, it is probable, is sufficient to direct the attention of the reader, which is all we could find, room to do in the narrow compass of a note.  But it is probable, that to most persons, the observations of a late navigator, Captain Krusenstern, will be admitted as decisive of the question of fact, without further enquiry.  They may have another effect too, viz. to destroy that delusion which many persons labour under as to the innocence and amiableness of mankind in a state of nature.  “Notwithstanding,” says he, “the favourable account in Captain Cook’s voyages of the Friendly, the Society, and the Sandwich islands, and the enthusiasm with which Forster undertakes their