for itself; but this ulcer is higher and deeper:--it lies in the religion, which is incapable of reform: it is an ulcer reaching as high as the paradise which Islamism promises, and deep as the hell which it creates. We repeat, that Mahomet could not effectually have neutralized a poison which he himself had introduced into the circulation and life-blood of his Moslem economy. The false prophet was forced to reap as he had sown. But an evil which is certain, may be retarded; and ravages which tend finally to confusion, may be limited for many generations. Now, in the case of the African provincials which we have noticed, we see an original incapacity of Islamism, even in its palmy condition, for amalgamating with any _superior_ culture. And the specific action of Mahometanism in the African case, as contrasted with the Roman economy which it supplanted, is thus exhibited by Mr Finlay in a most instructive passage, where every negation on the Mahometan side is made to suggest the countervailing usage positively on the side of the Romans. O children of Romulus! how noble do you appear when thus fiercely contrasted with the wild boars who desolated your vineyards! "No local magistrates elected by the people, and no parish priests connected by their feelings and interests both with their superiors and inferiors, bound society together by common ties; and no system of legal administration, independent of the military and financial authorities, preserved the property of the people from the rapacity of the government." Such, we are to understand, was _not_ the Mahometan system: such _had_ been the system of Rome. "Socially and politically," proceeds the passage, "the Saracen empire was little better than the Gothic, Hunnish, and Avar monarchies; and that it proved more durable, with almost equal oppression, is to be attributed to the powerful enthusiasm of Mahomet's religion, which tempered for some time its avarice and tyranny." The same sentiment is repeated still more emphatically at p. 468--"The political policy of the Saracens was of itself utterly barbarous; and it only caught a passing gleam of justice from the religious feeling of their prophet's doctrines."