Page:Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society - Volume 1.djvu/54

18 warm and fertile regions of the Tropics, or rather of the Equinoctial, where lodging and clothing, the two most necessary things after food, are rendered almost superfluous by the climate, and where food itself is produced with very little exertion, we find how small an advancement has in most cases been made; while, on the other hand, the whole of Europe, and by far the greater part of China, is situated beyond the northern Tropic. If, again, we go further north, to those Arctic Regions where men are still in a very miserable state, we shall find that there thay have no materials to work upon. Nature is such a niggard in the returns which she makes to labour, that industry is discouraged and frozen, as it were, in the outset. In other words, the proportion is destroyed. The equinoctial regions are spontaneously fertile, and the arctic too unkindly barren: and industry, wealth, and civilization seem on this account to have been principally confined to the temperate zone, where there is at once necessity to excite labour, and production, to recompense it. I am well aware that there are other important circumstances, besides geographical situation, which influence the progress of nations: all I mean to say is, that the last cause does not seem generally to have met with the attention is deserves. It will be obvious too, that the foregoing observations apply solely to those counties whose inhabitants may be considered as indigenous, in the common acceptation of the word, and not to such as have been peopled by extensive emigrations from old states, whence all their industry and knowledge—""—have been transferred.