339

NOTES.

NOTE A, (p. 19.)

MANY people may think these views of human nature too favourable, and not to be granted without a very wide induction.

I have adopted them from the author referred to in the note*, because his research seems to have been considerable, and his conclusions borne out by travellers whose accounts have appeared since his work was published. His views seem to me in accordance with all that we see of the dependence of human character upon the circumstances in which it is placed.

Social affections are assuredly innate, as well as the seeds of angry and malevolent passions, and where external circumstances are such as to give very little provocation to the latter, it seems natural and probable that the first should predominate.

It is true that it is only where few ideas and few wants have been awakened, that we can suppose human beings without causes of discord and rivalry, but in the diversity of human conditions a few such

occur.

* HUGH MURRAY.

NOTE B, (p. 52.)

I have been supplied with the following quotation from MILL'S History of British India, vol. i., p. 389, Note:

"Mr. Richardson, who is one of the most nervous in assertion, and the most feeble in proof, of all the Oriental enthusiasts, maintains that the women enjoyed high consideration among the Arabians and Persians, nay, the very Tartars; so generally was civilization diffused in Asia. In proof, he tells us that the Arabian women had a right, by the laws, to the enjoyment of independent property by inheritance, by gift, by marriage settlement, or by any other mode of acquisition. The evidence he adduces of their rights is three Arabian words, which signify a marriage portion, paraphernalia in the disposal of the wife, a marriage settlement.- See RICHARDSON, pp. 198, 331, 479.

"But surely a language may possess three words of the signification he assigns, and yet the women of the people who use it be in a state of melancholy degradation. In the times of Homer, though a wife was actually purchased from the father, still the father gave with her a dower. Il. lib. 9, v. 147, 148. If the Tartars carry their women with them in their wars, and even consult them, "The North American tribes,' says Mr. Millar, 'are often accustomed to admit their women into their public councils, and even to allow them the privilege of being first called to give their opinion upon every subject of deliberation. Yet,' as

he adds immediately after, there is no country in the world where the female sex are in general more neglected and despised.'—See Distinction of Ranks, ch. 1, s. 2. From insulated expressions, or facts, no general conclusion can safely be drawn."

Notwithstanding the doubts Mr. Mill (who is, I believe, one of the greatest authorities upon Oriental questions,) throws over the accuracy of Mr. Richardson, I still think, in the absence of more positive evidence against the fact, that it is probable the manners of the Arabians in their own country were not very dissimilar from those of the Spanish Arabians, where the consideration the women received appears confirmed by many circumstances. In the note, Mr. Mill seems scarcely to allow sufficient weight for the variety of manners that must prevail, to a certain extent, even in barbarous countries. The Tartars are held to have great diversity of character and habits among their various tribes. The same was true of the Arabians. Sir John Malcolm's evidence to the superior condition of the Eelyat women seems too authentic to be doubted. That the condition of women was, at least, as good among civilized Arabians as among the rude Eelyats, seems most probable. However, it must never be forgotten that even if we admitted, to the fullest extent, all that "Oriental enthusiasts" have written on the subject, the great fact remains of polygamy. Wherever that prevails, women are property, not citizens. Even among the Eelyats, who are not polygamists, (though their religion permits it,) the virtue, intelligence, and freedom of the women do not

prevent them from being still regarded as inferiors, and losing their privileges the moment it suits the inclinations of the other sex. Therefore, whatever the privileges of women may have been in those Eastern countries where they were best used, yet if we compare them with the rights of nature and the interests of society, we shall probably not hesitate to regard their condition still as a "melancholy degradation."

NOTE C, (p. 173.)

Let those who think this too strong, imagine a state of subordination, under which a man never could know to what concessions he was bound; and in which he never could rise from his depression, when he fell into the hands of a bad master.

A moment's reflection will show that the case of soldiers, servants, and others, whose engagements subject them to a good deal of indefinite and arbitrary control, is in reality very different. The restraints to which they engage to submit for payment, have no resemblance to those that are imposed on people by law, and without their choice. Men will endure many things freely, which they undertake for an equivalent, or for what they expect to find such; but which they will not submit to as arbitrary inflictions.

There is scarcely any condition a man can choose, in which the duties and obedience to which he pledges himself, are not limited as to amount, or as