CHAPTER XVI.

PAST AND PRESENT STATE OF SYRIA.-HOW AFFECTED BY MOHAMMED ALI'S CONQUEST.—IBRAHIM PASHA'S ADDresses. -SYRIAN GOVERNMENT.-EXACTIONS.-CONSCRIPTIONS.INSURRECTIONS.-INSECURITY OF PERSON AND PROPERTY. -BEIROUT MERCHANTS' STATEMENT.—INDUSTRIOUS HABITS DESTROYED.-GENERAL IMPOVERISHMENT.—GRADUAL DE

CLINE.

"Dites, monumens des temps passées! les cieux ont ils changé leurs lois, et la terre sa marche ? le soleil a-t-il éteint ses feux dans l'espace?.. les pluies et les rosées demeurent elles fixées dans les airs? . . les ruisseaux se sont ils taris? et les plantes sont elles privées des semences et de fruit. Le ciel a-t-il dénié a la terre, et la terre à ses habitans, les biens que jadis ils leur accordent. Si rien n'a changé dans la creation, si les mêmes moyens qui existérent subsistent encore, à quoi tient donc, que les races presentes ne soient ce que furent les races passées ?"-Volney.

SYRIA, the country so renowned for its wealth and commerce in antient history, and which, in the time of Josephus and of Strabo, was supposed to possess a population of ten millions of inhabitants, is now reduced to a sad state of desertion and solitude. At the present time it is poorer, less

PAST AND PRESENT STATE OF SYRIA. 453

peopled, less cultivated, and possesses fewer natural resources than at any period in its history since the time of Solomon. How is it, we are tempted to exclaim, that cities formerly so celebrated for their magnificence and populousness now lie deserted and in ruins-that plains possessing a fine cultivable soil are now desolate and neglected, that the country generally is deprived of inhabitants, and that the small population at present existing, is collected in thinly scattered villages and towns, while the intermediate district is left uncultivated? Does not the country possess the same natural advantages as formerly, and is there not the same soil and the same climate? What is become of the cities which are enumerated in comparatively recent times, as having been captured by the Moslems after a stout resistance, or ransomed for a heavy tribute? Where is Abyla with its fair, and the thousands of people who annually assembled there for purposes of traffic and commerce? Where Chalcis, which was taxed by the Saracens "at 5000 ounces of gold, 5000 ounces of silver, 2000 robes of silk, and as many figs and olives as would load 5000 asses?" What is the present state of Antioch, "the throne of the successors of Alexander, the seat of the Roman government in the East, which had been decorated by Cæsar with

the title of free, holy and inviolate," and which was ransomed of the Saracens for 300,000 pieces of gold? Where Cæsarea, whose citizens solicited their pardon with an offering to the Saracens of 200,000 pieces of gold? Where such caravans of silk and merchandize as are described to have been captured by the Saracens on their way to the then populous and wealthy city of Baalbec? What now are the state and aspect of Emesa or Hems, Heliopolis or Baalbec, which under the last of the Cæsars were strong and populous?_"Their turrets glittered from far, an ample space was covered with private and public buildings, and the citizens were illustrious by their spirit or their pride, their riches or their luxury. ""*

Of the various cities that are enumerated in the antient geography of Syria the very sites of many are now undetermined, and others are dwindled to a mud village or a heap of ruins. What now are Antioch and Cæsarea, Tyre and Sidon, and what the antient Berytus? where its famous law school which, less than a century before the Saracenic invasion, distributed annually its hundreds of students throughout the eastern empire, to defend and explain the complicated rights connected with the property which then existed in the country, but

* Gibbon.

PAST AND PRESENT STATE OF SYRIA. 455

which no longer exists to employ the talents and ingenuity of the learned professors of that science? "The court of the Prætorian Prefect of the East could alone furnish employment for one hundred and fifty advocates, sixty-five of whom were distinguished by peculiar privileges, and two were annually chosen with a salary of sixty pounds of gold to defend the causes of the treasury.”

The inhabitants of these countries were sunk in effeminacy-they were unaccustomed to warthey were enervated and relaxed, and were without spirit, bravery, or patriotism. The Saracens poured like a devouring torrent over their peaceful plains and smiling valleys,-they were animated by the booty which awaited their grasp, and their fierce religious zeal hurried them irresistibly forward in their enthusiastic course; they seized the strongholds of the land, and ruled the country by the sword; they were not cultivators of the soil, nor did they seek to extend their empire by promoting the arts of industry and of peace. They were all mere consumers-they lived themselves upon the industry of the people whom they conquered, and on the wealth and capital which they found in the country when they took possession

of it.

*Gibbon.

From the very first establishment, however, of the wide extended empire of these fierce spoliators, it was plainly manifest that it carried with it the seeds of a sure and rapid decline. The industrious classes, upon whom these conquerors must of course have leaned for support, were rapidly diminished by oppression. The robber chiefs and their wild bands turned not their attention to the cultivation of the soil; the arts of peace were not their trade, and they very soon destroyed all habits of industry and all incitement to acquire property among the population whom they conquered, by their arbitrary exactions and the insecurity that was felt under their sway. Production diminished, capital diminished, and the population, year by year, gradually declined. The conquered population felt no motive to acquire property, which was every moment liable to be taken from them, and all their labour to be thus spent in vain.

When these ruthless conquerors had devoured the substance of the vanquished, their cupidity reacted against themselves; they fell out, they pillaged one another, and, from the highest potentate to the meanest governor, the land presented one scene of robbery, plunder, confiscation, and massacre; disorder was introduced among all classes of society; there were no settled laws or