1-8 Mr. Davids Memoir concerning the Chinese. 



warm and fertile regions of the Tropics, or rather of the Equinoctial, where 

 lodging and clothing, the two most necessary things after food, are ren- 

 dered almost superfluous by the climate, and where food itself is produced 

 with very little exertion, we find how small an advancement has in most 

 cases been made ; while, on the other hand, the whole of Europe, and by 

 far the greater part of China, is situated beyond the northern Tropic. If, 

 again, we go farther north, to those Arctic Regions where men are still in a 

 very miserable state, we shall find that there they have really no materials to 

 work upon. Nature is such a niggard in the returns which she makes to 

 labour, that industry is discouraged and frozen, as it wer^ in the outset. 

 In other words, the proportion is destroyed. The equinoctial regions are 

 too spontaneously fertile, and the arctic too unkindly barren : and in- 

 dustry, wealth, and civilization seem on this account to have been prin- 

 cipally confined to the temperate zone, where there is at once necessity to 

 excite labour, and production, to recompense it. I am well aware that there 

 are other important circumstances, besides geographical situation, which 

 influence the progress of nations : all I mean to say is, that the last cause 

 does not seem generally to have met with the attention it deserves. It will 

 be obvious too, that the foregoing observations apply solely to those coun- 

 tries whose inhabitants may be considered as indigenous, in the common 

 acceptation of the word, and not to such as have been peopled by extensive 

 emigrations from old states, wiience all their industry and knowledge — 

 " tanta memoria pra-teritorum futurorumque prudentia, tot artes, tanta- 

 scientiffi, tot inventa" — have been transferred. 



