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 reproduction;-and how different are the results! We now see millions of men and animals inhabiting an extent of country which would scarcely 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; în 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 establishment of

property. It puts an end to the wandering life of barbarians, induces men to settle, and inures them to regular labour; it gives them prudence and foresight ; teaches 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.

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CONVERSATION IV.

ON PROPERTY-continued.

EFFECTS OF INSECURITY OF PROPERTY. - EXAMPLES FROM VOLNEY'S TRAVELS. OBJECTIONS RAISED AGAINST CIVILISATION. STATE OF BETICA, FROM TELEMACHUS. OBJECTIONS TO COMMUNITY OF GOODS. ESTABLISHMENT OF JESUITS IN PARAGUAY. MORAVIANS. -STATE OF SWITZERLAND. ADVANTAGES RESULTING FROM THE ESTABLISHMENT AND SECURITY OF PROPERTY.

MRS. B.

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 returning 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 families "into the mountains, or wander in the plains. It often "happens that even individuals turn robbers 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, be"come new hordes and new tribes. We may say, “therefore, that in cultivated countries the wandering "life originates in the injustice or want of policy of "the government."

MRS. B.

This, you see, is very much to the point: but here is another passage equally applicable.

CAROLINE reads.

"The silks of Tripoli are every day losing their "quality from the decay of the mulberry trees, of "which scarcely any thing now remains but some "hollow trunks. Why not plant new ones? That is

"an European observation. Here they never plant; "because, were they either to build or plant, the Pacha "would say this man has money, and it would be ex"torted from him."

Besides, where there is so little actual security, what reliance can be placed on futurity? What reason would the proprietors have to hope that the mulberry trees would ever repay them for the trouble and expense of planting them? Yet I wonder that the government of the country should not, for its own sake, encourage the industry of its subjects.

MRS. B.

In the wretched government of the Turks, every thing is so insecure, from the life and property of the sovereign to that of the lowest of his subjects, that no one looks to futurity, but every man endeavours to grasp at and enjoy what is immediately within his reach. The following passage will show you what sufferers they all are by such a mistaken system of policy.

CAROLINE (reading).

"In consequence of the wretchedness of the govern"ment, the greater part of the pachalics are impover"ished and laid waste. In the ancient registers of "imports, upwards of 3200 villages were reckoned "in that of Aleppo, but at present the collector can "scarcely find 400. Such of our merchants as have "resided there 20 years have themselves seen the

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greater part of the environs of Aleppo become de"populated. The traveller meets with nothing but "houses in ruins, cisterns rendered useless, and fields "abandoned. Those who cultivated them are fled