mer's heat and the winter's cold. It flourishes in almost every climate, and is adapted not only for the food of man, but for that of a great variety of domestic animals, and it yields by fermentation a pleasant and salubrious beverage. The grain will keep many years, and affords such a durable means of subsistence, that danger could no longer be apprehended in trusting to futurity, and plenty was secured during the longest and most unproductive winters.

But the cultivation of this inestimable plant cannot be undertaken without considerable funds, fixed habitations, implements of husbandry *, domestic animals; in a word, establishments which could neither be created nor maintained without the institution of property. Savages have no corn, no cultivation, no domestic animals; they consume and destroy every thing without ever considering re-production; and how different are the results! We now see millions of men and animals inhabiting an extent of country which would scarcely

* These are at first of a very rude and imperfect construction. In some parts of India the plough of a Hindoo, even to this day, is formed of a crooked stick very inartificially sharpened, and not unfrequently drawn by his wife. The use of domestic animals in agriculture is another step towards civilisation; but no farming establishment whatever could either be created or maintained without the institution of property.

have sufficed for the maintenance of two or three

hundred savages.

CAROLINE.

Let us rest a little, my dear Mrs. B. I am almost bewildered with the number and variety of ideas that you have presented to my mind. I wonder that these things have not occurred to me before; but I have been so accustomed to see the world in its present improved state, that my attention was never drawn to the many obstacles and difficulties it must have encountered, and the laborious progressive steps it must have made, before society could have attained its present state of perfection.

MRS. B.

Perfection! comparatively speaking I suppose you mean; for it is not long since you were making lamentable complaints of the actual state of society; in which indeed I could not entirely agree with you, though I think that we are still far removed from perfection. But let us continue to trace the progress of wealth and civilisation up to their present state, before we begin to find any fault with existing institutions.

CAROLINE.

I think I have now a very clear idea of the important consequences which result from the estab

lishment of property. It puts an end to the wandering life of barbarians, induces men to settle, and enures 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.

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