(c) From the bible translators you are given to understand, that the order of the Pharaoh of Egypt was to have houses built for the midwives, who were to be the executioners of the babes; but I beg leave to say the edict was to oblige the children of Israel, scattered in their tents after the manner of their Scythian race, to come together, that the monstrous decree might be carried the better into effect, and that the midwives may not avail themselves of the excuse they made, for the escape of some of the infants, by saying that the Hebrew women being lively, they were delivered before they could come to them, scattered over the face of the land :-and here I beg leave to observe, that the bible translators have most scandalously disfigured various passages of the writings of the Hebrews, from the discordance of the relatives to their antecedents.

(d) With some exceptions which shall be noted when I come to speak of language, instances that are conclusive to the difference between the Britanni and Brigantes.

Of the Language of the Scythian Race.

PART XII.

HAVING conducted you thus far, pointing out in our progress various criterions of the Scythian race, and of their dissimilarity from all other ancient people, I come now to exhibit a record that hath survived all the columns, erected to perpetuate the memory of the subjugation of once independent nations, and the indiscriminate fate of the millions of human sacrifices, offered up on the sanguined altars of ambition and power, by merciless barbarians called conquerors, their names held in veneration as heroes, men illustrious, instead of being devoted to just execration as enemies of the human race, destroyers of their kind. This imperishable memorial is language, which, though imperishable, hath undergone divers mutations, according to a variety of circumstances too obvious to require particular notice.

This is a subject which, whilst it admits of, and hath been involved in an infinity of confusion and perplexity, is never the less susceptible of the clearest demonstration, by an observance of the plain and simple rule of mounting up to the very source, as essentially necessary as in hydraulics, wherein it is not possible to succeed, if the fountain be not thoroughly explored, and perfectly ascertained.

Here, as on former occasions, we must have recourse to the Hebrews, by whom we are informed that 2247 years anteċedently to the christian era,

"The whole earth was of one and the same language, which their God confounded, insomuch that men could not understand each other's speech, to prevent the prosecution of the building of the tower of Babel."

However satisfactory this mode of accounting for the variety of languages found among the many nations of the earth may be to ignorance, or may be openly and loudly declared to be by hypocrisy, whilst it inwardly laughs at the whimsical conceit; to me, who am not in the trammels of ignorance, with the credulity and prejudices of which I will not palter, at which I will never wink, who am not damned in hypocrisy, with the detestable insincerity of which I will enter into no compromise, this solution is not convincing, therefore I will travel higher for the spring than the point where the sacred penman, the inspired writer, hath directed us to find it.

As it hath heretofore been noticed, that architecture was an art altogether new to the Scythians, till the invasion of the Assyrians; so here it is to be observed, that no mention is to be found, in the writings of the Hebrews, of any difference of language, till the arrival of a people, who "journeying from the East, found a plain on the land of Shinar, and dwelt there;" and "built the tower and city of Ba-bel," that is, till the arrival of the Assyrians on the lands of the Scythians. To these novel, and to them surprising events, the Hebrews assigned one and the same date; so far the traditions are founded on fact, (as most traditions are) whilst the superstructure is the work of fancy, the falsity of the tales manifested, not only by the evidence of other ancient people, but by the right reason of man. When the author of Genesis asserts, that "all the earth had been of one language," you are to take to account their invariable mode of expression, their earth was the portion of the globe known to them; true, all their earth was of one, the Scythian speech, till the invasion of the Assyrians, on that event another, the Syriac language, was introduced.

That the Assyrians were much farther advanced than the Scythians in the art of war, is proved by the fact of their dismembering the Scythian empire, and in their progress towards civilization is to be presumed, from their amazing skill in the science of architecture; and though there be no direct authority for their being versed in the knowledge of letters, it must be inferred from the circumstance of their having preserved a

register of their astronomical observations, commenced in twelve years after their occupation of Shinar, carried in nine: teen hundred years afterwards by Calisthenes to Macedon, where it was examined and found correct by Aristotle; and as I before shewed, that subsequently to the appearance of the Assyrians west of the Scind, there were four genera of the human species in the west of Asia, and the east of Africa, different each from the other, the variance not have grown out of a separation from one parent stock, but always distinct productions of the elements of their several climates; so here I say, there were from that epoch four primitive languages, the Arabian, the Scythian, Egyptian, and Syriac, totally different one from the other, the variance not the effect of spiritual intervention, preter-natural agency, but of the ordinary operations of nature, mankind being found to express their thoughts in different terms, according to their nations, insomuch that language hath been, and ever must be acknowledged the most unerring conclusive criterion of origin, it not being conceivable that any but kindred people could use similar words to make their wants and passions known.

Though I may content myself with asserting the primitive difference of these four languages, I shall illustrate the fact with a few observations. When Abram emigrated from Chaldea to Canaan, he is represented not only in the practice of the manners, customs, and religion, but in the use of the language of the children of that land, with whom he held frequent conference, no mention made of any difference of speech. But when Jacob, his grandson, entered into a covenant with Laban, (in the same degree of kindred from Terah, and abided in Syria of Messipotamia from the time of that country being subjected to the power of the Assyrian, who is expressly called a Syrian, and had adopted that language,) and they piled up stones as a memorial of the promise of friendship, we find Jacob calling the heap Galead, which is Scythian, which Laban called Jegar Sahadutha, which is Syriac, both having the same signification, though no two terms can be more unlike.

So in the time of Hezekiah, when Sennacherib practised on k

the government of Judea, the old jacobinical trick, and sent Rabshakeh to speak flattering words to the poor of Jerusalem, for the purpose of inducing them to become slaves to a foreign yoke, in order to escape from native slavery. Eliakim said unto him,

"Speak, I pray thee, to thy servants in the Syrian language, for we (Eliakim, Shebna and Joah,) understand it, and talk not with us in the Jews language, in the ears of the people that are on the wall;" so entirely different were these two languages, that the knowledge of Rabshakeh of Hebrew hath been attributed to his being one of the children of Israel, carried away from Samaria into captivity, by Shalman Assur, and now selected by Sennacherib for this purpose, whilst the acquaintance of the Syriac by these Hebrews, is accounted for by the fact, that it was studied by men of distinction, and them only in Judea, as a refined and more polished language; moreover, is it not a fact, that on the return of the children of Israel from the Babylonian captivity, (where their books were written in the Chaldean language, which was Syriac, with some mixture of Arabic and Scythian,) was it not the practice for the priest to read in the temple of Jerusalem, the portions of the service in that Chaldean language, which not being understood by the poor people who returned, nor by any of those who still remained in Judea; did not another of the priests interpret these portions of the writings in the Hebrew tongue?

If the Scythian differed so entirely from the Syriac, so did it from the Arab and Egyptian, the difference original, radical; of the variance then of these three languages, and of the Chinese Indi, Tatars, and the many nations of Afric, from the Scythian, and from each other, I shall speak no farther for the present, and now confine myself to the consideration of the Scythian language, and its kindred dialects, throughout the earth.

From the original seat of the Scythian race, as on the chart, colonies spread themselves, east to the Scind, south to the Ocean, west to the Mediterranean sea, north to Caucasus, the