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and family for two weeks in more than the average 

 comfort enjoyed by his countrymen, upon what is 

 equivalent to a single day's wage of an English 

 artisan. The legendary opulence of the gorgeous 

 East, which so long kindled the imagination of 

 Western nations, was displayed chiefly in the courts 

 of sovereigns, in the palaces of their great officers, 

 provincial satraps, and territorial magnates, and in 

 the bales of the merchants who ministered to their 

 luxury. But beneath this splendour and ostentation 

 of wealth lay the inconceivable misery and poverty 

 of the oppressed millions, struggling to maintain a 

 wretched existence upon the little that was left them 

 of the produce which their labour extracted from the 

 soil. 



The immemorial condition of the cultivators of the 

 soil throughout the world lias been one of hard toil 

 and squalid living. Philosophically considered, the 

 agricultural life belongs to the lower stages of human 

 development. Light, expansion, and human progress 

 are the natural accompaniments of commerce which 

 binds in an association of interests community to 

 community and race to race. Commerce awakens 

 the higher faculties of exploration and invention, 

 produces wealth and luxury which, if they only knew 

 it, is the most potent elevator of the working classes, 

 and the handmaid of a rising civilisation and of a 

 higher human life. In the beginnings of agriculture, 

 which was the departure from the lower stage of 

 human existence, the hunting life, a large area of 



