26 



all industry is ruined. The fine arts can be little progres- 

 sive, where nothing is repaired, nothing improved: where 

 houses are built, merely for the necessity of habitation, 

 without any great i-egard to duration, elegance, or conve- 

 nience. There is no digging of ditches, planting of trees, or 

 agricultural improvements: every thing is drawn from the 

 ground, and nothing restored to it: no care is taken to 

 provide against the deficiency of impropitious seasons; or 

 to guard the country from the ravaging inroads of seas, 

 rivers, or shifting sands, by mounds, embankments, canals, 

 or plantations. Thus famine is a frequent visitant,* and the 

 land becomes a desert.-f- The fine arts are yet further re- 

 tarded by another principle of despotism. It is a decided 

 foe to all innovation. The manners, pursuits, arts, and 

 usages, even indifferent things, of the earliest times, are 

 preserved inviolate, as if they were something sacred. Thus 

 we find the arts, the manners, and state of society, exhi- 

 bited to us in the Scriptures, and in the poems of Homer, 

 still remain unaltered in the East. Though this may be 

 partly owing to climate, yet much must be ascribed to 

 political causes, included in the government. 



Though agriculture is in a low condition in despotic 

 states, yet the people are rather agricultural than manu- 

 facturing ; 



* We find, in the early periods of English history, wlien the government 

 was nearly arbitrary, that famines were frequent. 



t The shifting sands daily spread, in Egypt: the ancient canals are suf- 

 fered to fall to decay. It is apprehended by man}', that the most fertile 

 country in the world will, in time, become a desert. 



