To those causes let another still be added, the religious worship of the country, which, without any dispute or question, is greatly in its favour.

To speak nothing of the religious opinions or modes of worship in ancient times, there are three at present that merit attention and admit of comparison.

The Christian religion is distinguished for raising men in character, and the Mahomedan for sinking them low.  Whenever the Mahomedan faith has extended, the people are degraded in their manners, and the governments despotic.  The disposition of a Mahomedan king [end of page #263] or emperor is more different in its nature, from that of a Christian sovereign, than the form of a hat is from that of a turban.

Under the most despotic Christian sovereigns, matters are governed by law, there are no regular murders committed by the hand of power, without the intervention of justice; and if plenitude of power admits of the greatest excesses in the sovereign, in some Christian countries, the opinion of his fellow men, the fear of his God, or some sentiment or principle in his own breast, restrains him in the exercise of it.

It is not so with Mahomedan princes:  with them, nothing is sacred that they hate, nothing shameful that they do.  Whatever their conscience may be, whatever may be the nature of their moral rules, rapine and murder are certainly not forbidden by them, or the law is not obeyed.  In proportion to the despotism and ferocity of the sovereign, is the slavishness of the people, their brutality, and vice, in all Mahomedan countries; their character and its great inferiority is so well known, that it is impossible for any person to be ignorant of it.

When the Mahomedan governments possess power, they are proud and overbearing; the people luxurious, and given to every refinement in vice.  When they sink, that pride becomes ferocity, and the luxury degenerates into brutality and sloth; but neither in the one nor in the other case have they the proper value for science, for literature, for liberty, or for any of the acquirements that either make a man estimable or useful.  They neither excel in arts, nor in science; phisically =sic=, they are inferior in utility, and their minds are less instructed.  They are not equal to Christians either in war or in peace, nor to be compared to them for any one good quality.

The greatest and the best portion of the old world is, however, in their hands; but, in point of wealth or power, they are of little importance, and every day they are sinking lower still.

Amongst those who profess Christianity it has been remarked, by all who have travelled, and who have had an opportunity of observing it, that agriculture, commerce, and manufactures, flourish most in Protestant countries.  Even where there are different sects of the Christian religion in the same country, arts, manufactures, and commerce, appear to have flourished most amongst the Protestants.  The [end of page #264] cruelties of the Duke of Alva, and the absurd bigotry of Louis XIV. drove the most industrious inhabitants from the Netherlands, and from France, merely because they happened to be Protestants, which is a proof that there is a connection between that branch of the Christian religion and industry.  The Protestants were the most industrious.