as equally repugnant to justice and reason, as the rich are
thereby freed from all punishment--a procedure which to them appears
the height of absurdity.

"In the towns it often happens that the inhabitants of a whole street
are made to suffer for the malpractice of a single individual, the
master of a house for the faults of his domestics, and parents for
those of their children, in proportion to the share they may have had
in the transaction. In Europe, which boasts a purer religion and a
more enlightened philosophy, we very rarely see those punished who
have debauched and seduced others, never see parents and relatives
made to suffer for neglecting the education of their children and
kindred, at the same time that these heathens see the justice and
propriety of such punishment." Dealing with agriculture, the Swedish
physician remarked: "Agriculture is in the highest esteem with the
Japanese, insomuch that (the most barren and untractable mountains
excepted) one sees here the surface of the earth cultivated all over
the country, and most of the mountains and hills up to their very
tops. Neither rewards nor encouragements are necessary in a country
where the tillers of the ground are considered as the most useful
class of citizens and where they do not groan under various
oppressions, which in other countries have hindered, and ever must
hinder, the progress of agriculture. The duties paid by the farmer of
his corn in kind are indeed very heavy, but in other respects he
cultivates his land with greater freedom than the lord of a manor in
Sweden. He is not hindered two days together at a time, in consequence
of furnishing relays of horses, by which he perhaps earns a groat and
often returns with the loss of his horses; he is not dragged from his
field and plough to transport a prisoner or a deserter to the next
castle; nor are his time and property wasted in making roads, building
bridges, almshouses, parsonage-houses, and magazines. He knows nothing
of the impediments and inconveniences which attend the maintenance and
equipments of horses and foot soldiers. And what contributes still
more to his happiness, and leaves sufficient scope for his industry in
cultivating his land is this--that he has only one master, viz., his
feudal lord, without being under the commands of a host of masters, as
with us. No parcelling out of the land forbids him to improve to the
least advantage the portion he possesses, and no right of c