for sinking them low. Whenever the Mahomedan
faith has extended, the people are degraded in their manners, and the
governments despotic. The disposition of a Mahomedan king [end of
page #263] or emperor is more different in its nature, from that of a
Christian sovereign, than the form of a hat is from that of a turban.

Under the most despotic Christian sovereigns, matters are governed by
law, there are no regular murders committed by the hand of power,
without the intervention of justice; and if plenitude of power admits of
the greatest excesses in the sovereign, in some Christian countries, the
opinion of his fellow men, the fear of his God, or some sentiment or
principle in his own breast, restrains him in the exercise of it.

It is not so with Mahomedan princes: with them, nothing is sacred that
they hate, nothing shameful that they do. Whatever their conscience
may be, whatever may be the nature of their moral rules, rapine and
murder are certainly not forbidden by them, or the law is not obeyed.
In proportion to the despotism and ferocity of the sovereign, is the
slavishness of the people, their brutality, and vice, in all Mahomedan
countries; their character and its great inferiority is so well known,
that it is impossible for any person to be ignorant of it.

When the Mahomedan governments possess power, they are proud
and overbearing; the people luxurious, and given to every refinement
in vice. When they sink, that pride becomes ferocity, and the luxury
degenerates into brutality and sloth; but neither in the one nor in the
other case have they the proper value for science, for literature, for
liberty, or for any of the acquirements that either make a man
estimable or useful. They neither excel in arts, nor in science;
phisically =sic=, they are inferior in utility, and their minds are less
instructed. They are not equal to Christians either in war or in peace,
nor to be compared to them for any one good quality.

The greatest and the best portion of the old world is, however, in their
hands; but, in point of wealth or power, they are of little importance,
and every day they are sinking lower still.

Amongst those who profess Christianity it has been remarked, by all
who have travelled, and who have had an opportunity of observing it,
that agriculture, commerce, and manufactures, flourish most in
Protestant countries. Even where there are different sects of the
Christian religion in the same country, arts,