Henry Buckley - History of Civilization in England, Vol. 1 of 3

To the great body of the Indian people the name of Sudras is given; 115and the native laws respecting them contain some minute and curious provisions. If a member of this despised class presumed to occupy the same seat as his superiors, he was either to be exiled or to suffer a painful and ignominious punishment. 116If he spoke of them with contempt, his mouth was to be burned; 117if he actually insulted them, his tongue was to be slit; 118if he molested a Brahmin, he was to be put to death; 119if he sat on the same carpet with a Brahmin, he was to be maimed for life; 120if, moved by the desire of instruction, he even listened to the reading of the sacred books, burning oil was to be poured into his ears; 121if, however, he committed them to memory, he was to be killed; 122if he were guilty of a crime, the punishment for it was greater than that inflicted on his superiors; 123but if he himself were murdered, the penalty was the same as for killing a dog, a cat, or a crow. 124Should he marry his daughter to a Brahmin, no retribution that could be exacted in this world was sufficient; it was therefore announced that the Brahmin must go to hell, for having suffered contamination from a woman immeasurably his inferior. 125Indeed, it was ordered that the mere name of a labourer should be expressive of contempt, so that his proper standing might be immediately known. 126And lest this should not be enough to maintain the subordination of society, a law was actually made forbidding any labourer to accumulate wealth; 127while another clause declared, that even though his master should give him freedom, he would in reality still be a slave; ‘for,’ says the lawgiver – ‘for of a state which is natural to him, by whom can he be divested?’ 128

By whom, indeed, could he be divested? I ween not where that power was by which so vast a miracle could be worked. For in India, slavery, abject, eternal slavery, was the natural state of the great body of the people; it was the state to which they were doomed by physical laws utterly impossible to resist. The energy of those laws is, in truth, so invincible, that wherever they have come into play, they have kept the productive classes in perpetual subjection. There is no instance on record of any tropical country, in which wealth having been extensively accumulated, the people have escaped their fate; no instance in which the heat of the climate has not caused an abundance of food, and the abundance of food caused an unequal distribution, first of wealth, and then of political and social power. Among nations subjected to these conditions, the people have counted for nothing; they have had no voice in the management of the state, no control over the wealth their own industry created. Their only business has been to labour; their only duty to obey. Thus there has been generated among them, those habits of tame and servile submission, by which, as we know from history, they have always been characterized. For it is an undoubted fact, that their annals furnish no instance of their having turned upon their rulers, no war of classes, no popular insurrections, not even one great popular conspiracy. In those rich and fertile countries there have been many changes, but all of them have been from above, not from below. The democratic element has been altogether wanting. There have been in abundance, wars of kings, and wars of dynasties. There have been revolutions in the government, revolutions in the palace, revolutions on the throne; but no revolutions among the people; 129no mitigation of that hard lot which nature, rather than man, assigned to them. Nor was it until civilization arose in Europe, that other physical laws came into operation, and therefore other results were produced. In Europe, for the first time, there was some approach to equality, some tendency to correct that enormous disproportion of wealth and power, which formed the essential weakness of the greatest of the more ancient countries. As a natural consequence, it is in Europe that everything worthy of the name of civilization has originated; because there alone have attempts been made to preserve the balance of its relative parts. There alone has society been organized according to a scheme, not indeed sufficiently large, but still wide enough to include all the different classes of which it is composed, and thus, by leaving room for the progress of each, to secure the permanence and advancement of the whole.

The way in which certain other physical peculiarities confined to Europe, have also accelerated the progress of Man by diminishing his superstition, will be indicated towards the end of this chapter; but as that will involve an examination of some laws which I have not yet noticed, it seems advisable, in the first place, to complete the inquiry now before us; and I therefore purpose proving that the line of argument which has been just applied to India, is likewise applicable to Egypt, to Mexico, and to Peru. For by thus including in a single survey, the most conspicuous civilizations of Asia, Africa, and America, we shall be able to see how the preceding principles hold good of different and distant countries; and we shall be possessed of evidence sufficiently comprehensive to test the accuracy of those great laws which, without such precaution, I might be supposed to have generalized from scanty and imperfect materials.

The reasons why, of all the African nations, the Egyptians alone were civilized, have been already stated, and have been shown to depend on those physical peculiarities which distinguish them from the surrounding countries, and which, by facilitating the acquisition of wealth, not only supplied them with material resources that otherwise they could never have obtained, but also secured to their intellectual classes the leisure and the opportunity of extending the boundaries of knowledge. It is, indeed, true that, notwithstanding these advantages, they effected nothing of much moment; but this was owing to circumstances which will be hereafter explained; and it must, at all events, be admitted that they raised themselves far above every other people by whom Africa was inhabited.

The civilization of Egypt being, like that of India, caused by the fertility of the soil, and the climate being also very hot, 130there were in both countries brought into play the same laws; and there naturally followed the same results. In both countries we find the national food cheap and abundant: hence the labour-market over-supplied; hence a very unequal division of wealth and power; and hence all the consequences which such inequality will inevitably produce. How this system worked in India, I have just attempted to examine; and although the materials for studying the former condition of Egypt are much less ample, they are still sufficiently numerous to prove the striking analogy between the two civilizations, and the identity of those great principles which regulated the order of their social and political development.

If we inquire into the most important circumstances which concerned the people of ancient Egypt, we shall see that they are exactly the counterpart of those that have been noticed in India. For, in the first place, as regards their ordinary food, what rice is to the most fertile parts of Asia, that are dates to Africa. The palm-tree is found in every country from the Tigris to the Atlantic; 131and it supplies millions of human beings with their daily food in Arabia, 132and in nearly the whole of Africa north of the equator. 133In many parts of the great African desert it is indeed unable to bear fruit; but naturally it is a very hardy plant, and produces dates in such profusion, that towards the north of the Sahara they are eaten not only by man, but also by domestic animals. 134And in Egypt, where the palm is said to be of spontaneous growth, 135dates, besides being the chief sustenance of the people, are so plentiful, that from a very early period they have been given commonly to camels, the only beasts of burden generally used in that country. 136