The first requisite is security for person and property. No people were ever possessed of this without advancing, or were ever deprived of it without retrograding. The pursuit of property is the most universal, and the most potent of all natural educators. It teaches thoughtfulness, foresight, industry, self-denial, frugality, and many other valuable, if secondary and minor virtues, more generally and effectually than schools, philosophers, and religions have ever taught them. But where the local Governor, and the tax-collector are the complete lords of the ascendant, the motive to acquire property is nearly killed; and where it does in some degree survive, it has to be exercised under such disadvantages, that it becomes a discipline of vice rather than of virtue. Such, for centuries, has been the condition, under the rule of the Turk, of these by nature, in many respects, highly-favoured countries. The first step, then, towards their recovery must be to give them what they never have had, and never can have, we may almost affirm, under Eastern despots, perfect security for person and property. That would alone, and in itself, be a resurrection to life. It would lead on to everything that is wanted. An auxiliary might be found in (which may appear to some equally, or even more prosaic) a larger and freer use of the printing press, that is, of books and newspapers. This would, of course, naturally, and of itself, follow the security just spoken of. It would, however, be desirable in this fargone and atrophied case, if some means for the purpose could be discovered, or created, to anticipate a little, to put even the cart before the horse, and to introduce at once, I will not say a more extended use, but the germ of the use, of books and newspapers. I am afraid the effort would be hopeless, as things are now; and I know it would spring up of itself, if things were as they ought to be. Still the effort might be made. It is the only useful direction in which there appears to be at present an opening for philanthropic work. And, to speak sentimentally, what country has a more rightful claim to the benefits of the printing press than Egypt? It is only the modern application of the old Egyptian discovery of letters. To carry back to Egypt its own discovery, advanced some steps farther, is but a small acknowledgment that without that discovery none of our own progress, nor much, indeed, of human progress of any kind, would ever have been possible. There are a printing press, and even a kind of newspaper at Cairo, and, of course, at Alexandria; and at Jerusalem it is possible to get a shopkeeper’s card printed. But what is wanted is that there should be conferred on the people, to some considerable proportion—if such a thing be possible—the power of reading; and that there should be awakened within them the desire to read. No efforts, I think, would be so useful as those which might have these simple aims.