in Ancient and Modern Times. 101 



fairest parts of the habitable globe, are sufficiently obvious. 

 Throughout the whole of these ^vast regions, it is well known, 

 there prevails an almost total ignorance of all the arts of civi- 

 lization, and a systematic contempt of all sound principles of 

 government. If a more remote cause is sought for, it may 

 easily be found in that entire subjugation of all the best facul- 

 ties of the mind and body, which has been effected by the Ma- 

 hometan superstition, engrafted on Turkish barbarism. 1 con- 

 sider this as the most enormous and the most pernicious nui- 

 sance which has ever been set up against the happiness of man- 

 kind, and one which, at almost any price, ought, if possible, to 

 be abated. Nearly all the institutions of that religion ; its rites 

 and observances ; its toleration of polygamy ; its encourage- 

 ment of monastic orders ; but above all, the spirit of despotism 

 which it inculcates, tend directly to the diminution of the human 

 species. An abject, and often an inhuman slavery, mental and 

 corporeal, is diffused through every class of society. The auto- 

 cracy of the monarch is not more absolute than the domination 

 of his meanest subject, who has acquired the right of subjuga- 

 ting to his will a few unhappy beings more depressed than him- 

 self As the laws are generally inefficient where liberty is 

 unknown, there is, of course, no security for property, and, 

 therefore, no incentives to industry, and no hope of indepen- 

 dence. The visible plan of Providence in the association of the 

 sexes is wholly frustrated. A rich voluptuary, exhausted by 

 years and excesses, can take as many wives and concubines as 

 he thinks proper, and as these are all rigorously confined, they 

 are of course condemned to perpetual barrenness. A poor man, 

 though disposed to regularity, and capacitated for rearing a 

 family, is commonly deprived, by such monstrous appropria- 

 tions, of the power of taking a wife ; and in any case can have 

 little hope of providing for his children. It is not surprising 

 that, under such circumstances, the finest countries in the world 

 should exhibit all the symptoms of sterility and decay. 



The only chance of deliverance from this desolating evil which 

 has presented itself in later times, arose from the French inva- 

 sion of Egypt in 1799. That enterprise was assuredly under- 

 taken solely from views of ambition, and, probably, with some 

 ultimate designs on the British empire in India. It is also poa- 



