Travels in the Mogul Empire (Bernier) 4.6.1

4.6.1

The facts I have mentioned are sufficient to account for the rapid decline of the Asiatic states. It is owing to this miserable system of government that most towns in Hindoustan are made up of earth, mud, and other wretched materials ; that there is no city or town which, if it be not already ruined and deserted, does not bear evident marks of approaching decay. Without confining our remarks to so distant a kingdom, we may judge of the effects of despotic power unrelentingly exercised, by the present condition of Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Palestine, the once wonderful plains of Antioch, and so many other regions anciently well cultivated, fertile, and populous, but now desolate, and in many parts marshy, pestiferous, and unfit for human habitation. Egypt also exhibits a sad picture of an enslaved country. More than one-tenth part of that incomparable territory has been lost within the last eighty years, because no one will be at the expense of repairing the irrigation channels, and confining the Nile within its banks. The low lands are thus violently inundated, and covered with sand, which cannot be removed without much labour and expense. Can it excite wonder, that under these circumstances, the arts do not flourish here as they would do under a better government, or as they flourish in our happier France?