, which tempered for some time its avarice and tyranny." The
same sentiment is repeated still more emphatically at p. 468--"The
political policy of the Saracens was of itself utterly barbarous; and it
only caught a passing gleam of justice from the religious feeling of
their prophet's doctrines."

Thus far, therefore, it appears that Mahometanism is not much indebted
to its too famous founder: it owes to him a principle, viz. the unity of
God, which, merely through a capital blunder, it fancies peculiar to
itself. Nothing but the grossest ignorance in Mahomet, nothing but the
grossest non-acquaintance with Greek authors on the part of the Arabs,
could have created or sustained the delusion current amongst that
illiterate people--that it was themselves only who rejected Polytheism.
Had but one amongst the personal enemies of Mahomet been acquainted with
Greek, _there_ was an end of the new religion in the first moon of its
existence. Once open the eyes of Arabs to the fact, that Christians had
anticipated them in this great truth of the divine unity, and
Mahometanism could only have ranked as a subdivision of Christianity.
Mahomet would have ranked only as a Christian heresiarch or schismatic;
such as Nestorius or Marcian at one time, such as Arius or Pelagius at
another. In his character of _theologian_, therefore, Mahomet was simply
the most memorable of blunderers, supported in his blunders by the most
unlettered of nations. In his other character of _legislator_, we have
seen, that already the earliest stages of Mahometan experience exposed
decisively his ruinous imbecility. Where a rude tribe offered no
resistance to his system, for the simple reason that their barbarism
suggested no motive for resistance, it could be no honour to prevail.
And where, on the other hand, a higher civilization had furnished strong
points of repulsion to his system, it appears plainly that this
pretended apostle of social improvement had devised or hinted no readier
mode of conciliation than by putting to the sword all dissentients. He
starts as a theological reformer, with a fancied defiance to the world
which was no defiance at all, being exactly what Christians had believed
for six centuries, and Jews for six-and-twenty. He starts as a political
reformer, with a fancied conciliation to the world which was no
conciliation at all, but was sure to provoke imperishable hostility
wheresoever it had any effect at all.

We have thus review