plains where the Indian would have for ever continued to live in misery on the uncertain products of the chase, the Anglo-Saxons are every day founding societies of astonishing prosperity.

Traverse the world, and it will not be in the countries most favoured by nature that the richest peoples will be found. It is the right direction of labour, rather than the fertility of the soil, that contributes to wealth. The value of the land varies with that of the men who work it; it is the intelligence and energy of the cultivators which make it precious.

The powers of civilised man are becoming more and more competent to annul the effects of natural differences. The conquests of science in their universal diffusion will produce a very similar condition of civilisation in every country. Montesquieu was right in his assertion : "Bad legislators are those who enhance the defects of climate, good legislators are those who oppose them."

§ 5. Influence of Race on the Productiveness of Labour.

It is impossible to deny that aptitudes and inclinations are different in different races, and that these are not all equally ready to devote themselves to labour and the perfecting of its processes. Contrast the Australian, who will submit to starvation and misery rather than cultivate the earth, and the Chinese, who seems to find his happiness in relentless

and unceasing toil. Even among Europeans all nations do not bring the same aptitudes to their work. Where energy and perseverance are demanded the English are without rivals. The French have more taste and dexterity. Americans are the greatest adepts in the division of labour and the invention of machinery. If regard be had to the work done, the Belgian labourer is the least costly of any. Further, every country has its specialties: in marble, Italians are the best workers; in zinc, the Belgians; in iron, the English, and in silk, the French. Extreme cases excepted, education, habits, beliefs, institutions and laws-in a word, the causes susceptible of modification, exercise on the productiveness of labour a much greater influence than do flesh and blood, i.e. than the causes which are hereditary and unalterable.

Man is never sparing of his pains when these are properly rewarded. Thus Italians, though they are accused of idleness, brave the risk of fever in the Roman Campagna, and reap the corn under the terrible heat of June. Thus, too, the negro in the United States, since he has obtained his liberty and the right to hold property, takes care of his hut and his crop of cotton; and even in the middle of Africa the blacks cultivate their fields well whenever they are in a state of security. In former times, socalled inferior races, as the Indians of Peru, and the Aztecs of Mexico, have constructed cities, palaces, and irrigatory canals, the ruins of which excite astonish

ment, while they maintained the highest system of cultivation in countries which under Europeans have become impoverished and depopulated. This affords the most convincing proof that in favouring production, institutions and laws are more effective than blood and race.

Since man is capable of perfection, to whatever race he may belong, he can acquire by means of education the greater part of the aptitudes in which he may be deficient.

§ 6. Influence of Philosophic and Religious Doctrines on the Productiveness of Labour.

In proportion as a philosophic or religious doctrine is founded on a just conception of man, his destiny and duties, it is favourable to abundant production of wealth, to its fair distribution and rational consumption. Exactly so far as a philosophy or creed is contrary to reason, it helps to perpetuate misery and injustice. If the economic condition of Christians be compared with that of peoples of other creeds, the difference is at once apparent. Nor can this difference be attributed to the influence of race, since many Mussulmans, and Hindoos are whites, while the barbarous and Mohammedan Circassians of the Caucasus are among the noblest branches of our race, which certain writers have even called "Caucasian."

Christianity has been favourable to national prosperity, because by it, labour, simplicity of life,

and justice in social relations, have been brought into honour. Again, it has put an end to slavery, not by commanding its abolition, but by proclaiming to men that they are brethren and equals. Even while preaching indifference to riches it has opened the sources from which wealth flows. The Christian communities which have followed most strictly the spirit of the Gospel have enjoyed the most widely spread prosperity, and among the Quakers in England, as Voltaire has remarked, and among the Mennonites in Holland, no poor can be found.

Notwithstanding the spiritual elevation of his monotheism the religion of Mohammed, except among the Moors of Spain, has everywhere been opposed to economic progress. Its fanaticism has produced indolence; its polygamy, the degradation of women; and the constant theocratic nature of its government, a diminution of individual energy.

The religion of China, in which the moral element has long gained the ascendant over the childish theogony which it contains, has been most favourable to labour by making it a duty, it might even be said an act of devotion. Thus on certain festivals the Emperor himself guides the plough. In Japan, again, agriculture and industry had reached the highest pitch of perfection, unaffected by any European influences. The fields were admirably cultivated, and comfort widely diffused. Shinto, the ancient religion of the Japanese, was a worship of nature of the simplest character, encumbered with

few rites and superstitions, and enjoining simplicity and economy not only on the great, but on the Emperor himself, and on all men the duty of work.

The aptitude of the Israelites for self-enrichment is one of the most curious facts in economic history. In former times they converted the barren hills of Palestine into a land "flowing with milk and honey," the comfortable home of a dense population. Since their dispersion, by their accumulation of capital, they have been advancing to the conquest of the world throughout which they are scattered. With their superiority in this respect race can have nothing to do, since their fellow Semites, the Arabs, have offered obstinate resistance to all economic progress. Their success is the consequence of their moral and religious ideas, which have created in them a second nature wholly devoted to the production and capitalisation of wealth. In other ancient. countries labour was despised as the lot of a slave; in Israel, on the contrary, the prophets glorified it as the source of all prosperity, while they blamed idleness as the mother of vice and suffering. Manual labour was considered as a means of improvement, and even the learned were obliged to practise it. Sages and their disciples alike guided the plough, and took as their maxim "labour and learn." Here are some extracts from the Proverbs of Solomon:

"He becometh poor that dealeth with a slack