under favourable circumstances, would hardly fail
to overthrow the power of the inferior nobles, and.
render them in time, not the hereditary despots of
their little principalities, but the mere creatures of
his will, and the instruments of his power in the
provinces. It was thus that, on the introduction of
the Mahomedan religion among the Macassars, a
succession of able princes, with the influence acquired
by their extensive conquests, seem to have
put them in the Way of becoming absolute.
The possession of wealth, the necessary consequence
of a soil of great fertility, encouraged in
Java the progress of absolute power, by strengthening
the hands of those in authority. The devotion
of the people to agricultural industry, by rendering
themselves more tame, and more at the mercy
of power than the wandering tribes, and their property
more tangible, went still farther towards it,
for wherever, in the east, agriculture is the principal
pursuit, there it may certainly be reckoned,
that the people will be found living under an absolute
government. * The influence of Hindu and
* This fact is finely illustrated by Humboldt in the following
passage, which did not occur to me until I had written
what is in the text. ie The northern provinces, New Biscay,
Sonora, afid New Mexico, were very thinly inhabited in
the sixteenth century. The natives were hunters and shepherds
! and they withdrew as the European conquerors advanced
towards the north. Agriculture alone attaches man
Mahomedan manners must, no doubt, have had
considerable effect in forwarding the same object.
In whatever country of the Archipelago arbitrary
government exists, the titles of the prince, of
his nobility, and of many of the offices of government,
will generally be found purely Hindu ;
but in the federal associations, their political institutions
do not afford a vestiog e of the lanog uagoe of India.
The feebleness, unskilfulness, and barbarism
even of the most improved of the nations of the
Indian islands, have always prevented them from
establishing permanent empires, and the most considerable
states have been but of momentary duration.
A succession of princes of ability overthrew
the federal establishments: from the feeble hands
of a succession of weak ones, power fell into the
hands of the governors of provinces, who became
hereditary lords of their respective jurisdictions.
The society having, however, become familiar with
to the soil, and developes the love of country. Thus we see
that, in the southern part of Anahuac, in the cultivated re-
gion adjacent to Tenichtitlan, the arctic colonists patiently
endured the cruel vexations exercised towards them by their
conquerors, and suffered every thing rather than quit the soil
which their fathers had cultivated. But, in the northern
provinces, the natives yielded to the conquerors their uncultivated
savannahs, which served for pasturage to the buffaloes.”
Humboldt's New Spain, B ook'll, chap. 6.