Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 3.djvu/16

 ^ GOVERNMENT. found within the wide mno-c of the Indian islands. In these regions, the more abject the state of man in the scale of social improvement, the freer the form of his government ; and in proportion as he advances in civilization, is that freedom abridged, until, at the top of the scale, he is subjected to a tyranny where not a vestige of liberty is discover- able. In short, he enjoys freedom when he has nothing else worth enjoying ; and when the com- forts of civil life accumulate around him, he is de- prived of the liberty of benefiting by them. No nation, indeed, inhabiting a warm climate has ever known how to reconcile freedom and civilization. In that portion of the globe there is hardly any medium between the unbounded licence of savage independence and uncontrolled despotism. Man there no sooner acquires a little industry and a little property, than he is made a slave on account of them, just as he himself enslaves the docile and laborious animals, while the useless savages of the desert or forest enjoy their freedom. The cause of this phenomenon is in a good mea- sure to be sought for in the softness and fruitful- ness of the climate, and the consequent facility of living with little exertion ; in a word, to the ab- sence of that wholesome discipline by which man, in severer regions, is bred to habits of hardihood, enterprise, and independence, and certainly not in any imagined innate feebleness of frame, for, on ex-