lishment of property. It puts an end to the wandering life of barbarians, induces men to settle, and inures them to regular labour; it teaches them prudence and foresight; induces them to embellish the face of the earth by cultivation; to multiply the useful tribes of animals and nutritious plants; and in short, it enables them so prodigiously to augment the stock of subsistence, as to transform a country which contained but a few poor huts and a scanty population into a great and wealthy nation.

CONVERSATION IV.

ON PROPERTY- continued.

EFFECTS OF INSECURITY OF PROPERTY.—EXAMPLES FROM VOLNEY'S TRAVELS.

-OBJECTIONS RAISED

Now that we have traced the rise and progress of civilisation to the security of property, let us see whether the reverse, that is to say, insecurity of property in a civilised country, will not degrade the state of man, and make him retrace his steps till he again degenerates into barbarism.

CAROLINE.

Are there any examples of a civilised people re

turning to a savage state? I do not recollect ever to have heard of such a change.

MRS. B.

No, because when property has once been instituted, the advantages it produces are such, that it can never be totally abolished; but in countries where the tyranny of government renders it very insecure, the people invariably degenerate, the country falls back into poverty, and a comparative state of barbarism. We have already noticed the miserable change in the once wealthy city of Tyre. Egypt, which was the original seat of the arts and sciences, is now sunk into the most abject degradation; and if you will read the passages I have marked for you in Volney's travels, you will find the truth of this observation very forcibly delineated.

CAROLINE reads.

"When the tyranny of a government drives the ❝ inhabitants of a village to extremity, the peasants "desert their houses, and withdraw with their fa"milies into the mountains, or wander in the plains. "It often happens that even individuals turn rob"bers in order to withdraw themselves from the "tyranny of the laws, and unite into little camps, ❝ which maintain themselves by force of arms; "these increasing become new hordes and new "tribes. We may say, therefore, that in cultivated

SE

"countries the wandering life originates in the in"justice or want of policy of the government."

MRS. B.

This, you see, is very much to the point: but here is another passage equally applicable.

CAROLINE reads.

"The silks of Tripoly are every day losing their quality from the decay of the mulberry-trees, of "which scarcely any thing now remains but some "hollow trunks. Why not plant new ones? That "is an European observation. Here they never "plant; because were they either to build or plant, "the Pacha would say this man has money, and "it would be extorted from him."

Besides, where there is so little actual security, what reliance can be placed on futurity? What reason would the proprietors have to hope that the mulberry-trees would ever repay them for the trouble and expense of planting them? Yet I wonder that the government of the country should not, for its own sake, encourage the industry of its subjects.

MRS. B.

In the wretched government of the Turks, every thing is so insecure, from the life and property of the sovereign, to that of the lowest of his subjects, that no one looks to futurity, but every man en

deavours to grasp at, and enjoy what is immediately within his reach. The following passage will show you what sufferers they all are by such a mistaken system of policy.

CAROLINE (reading).

Those

"In consequence of the wretchedness of the go"vernment, the greater part of the pachalics are "impoverished and laid waste. In the ancient "registers of imports upwards of 3200 villages "were reckoned in that of Aleppo, but at present "the collector can scarcely find 400. Such of our "merchants as have resided there 20 years, have "themselves seen the greater part of the environs "of Aleppo become depopulated. The traveller "meets with nothing but houses in ruins, cisterns "rendered useless, and fields abandoned. "who cultivated them are fled into the towns, "where the population is absorbed, but where at "least the individual conceals himself among the "crowd from the rapacious hands of despotism. In ❝ other countries the cities are in some measure "the overflow of the population of the country; in Syria they are the effect of its desertion. The "roads in the mountains are extremely bad, as the ❝ inhabitants are so far from levelling them that "they endeavour to render them more rugged, in "order, as they say, to cure the Turks of their “desire to introduce their cavalry.

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