an state
faithfully and brilliantly at twenty-five, is incapacitated at
thirty-five for any further service, by the very nature of the rewards
which he receives from the state. Within a very few years, every public
servant is usually emasculated by that unlimited voluptuousness which
equally the Moslem princes and the common Prophet of all Moslems
countenance as the proper object of human pursuit. Here is the mortal
ulcer of Islamism, which can never cleanse itself from death and the
odour of death. A political ulcer would or might have found restoration
for itself; but this ulcer is higher and deeper:--it lies in the
religion, which is incapable of reform: it is an ulcer reaching as high
as the paradise which Islamism promises, and deep as the hell which it
creates. We repeat, that Mahomet could not effectually have neutralized
a poison which he himself had introduced into the circulation and
life-blood of his Moslem economy. The false prophet was forced to reap
as he had sown. But an evil which is certain, may be retarded; and
ravages which tend finally to confusion, may be limited for many
generations. Now, in the case of the African provincials which we have
noticed, we see an original incapacity of Islamism, even in its palmy
condition, for amalgamating with any _superior_ culture. And the
specific action of Mahometanism in the African case, as contrasted with
the Roman economy which it supplanted, is thus exhibited by Mr Finlay in
a most instructive passage, where every negation on the Mahometan side
is made to suggest the countervailing usage positively on the side of
the Romans. O children of Romulus! how noble do you appear when thus
fiercely contrasted with the wild boars who desolated your vineyards!
"No local magistrates elected by the people, and no parish priests
connected by their feelings and interests both with their superiors and
inferiors, bound society together by common ties; and no system of legal
administration, independent of the military and financial authorities,
preserved the property of the people from the rapacity of the
government."

Such, we are to understand, was _not_ the Mahometan system: such _had_
been the system of Rome. "Socially and politically," proceeds the
passage, "the Saracen empire was little better than the Gothic, Hunnish,
and Avar monarchies; and that it proved more durable, with almost equal
oppression, is to be attributed to the powerful enthusiasm of Mahomet's
religion