Indeed, it may be stated as a general rule, clearly confirmed by history, that agriculture never can flourish under slave labor, nor even under villanage. It never did so in antiquity and it never has done so in modern times. In proportion as Egypt, Syria and Assyria fell a prey to political servitude and her twin-sister, or rather generator, domestic slavery, did their agriculture deteriorate and decay. In proportion as the nations of modern Europe have emerged from slavery and serfdom, has agriculture become a civilizing agency, progressive, rational and scientific. England, Germany, France, Switzerland, Belgium and Flanders, are living witnesses thereof; and, on the other side, Poland, Russia, Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Danubian Principalities--all possessed of the most fertile soils--scarce emerge from social, political and rural barbarity. The Moors and the Moriscoes were not slaves when they cultivated Andalusia in a manner never equalled. And what a wide difference between the agriculture of the free and slave sections of the United States! and that too, though the region of slave culture enjoys advantages both in climate and soil. The halting and uncertain advances made in the slave country, are but dimly breaking rays from the free, enlightened northern states. Thus do the oldest and the newest teach one lesson and tend to one result. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 9: In contradistinction to Aryanized Shemites or Chaldeans, known as Assyrians and Babylonians of the second epoch, and modern Kurdes. Ethnology and comparative philology everywhere discover similar bifurcations almost at the sources of ethnic life. These bifurcations are explained by natural growth and by the fusion of various tribes and nations. Thus Baktrya, Persia and Media present us with Aryas and Indo-Scythes or Aryanized Tartars. So, too, all primitive races divide and subdivide in the same manner within themselves. The Shemites divided into Chaldeans and Canaanites, and then into Arabs, Hebrews, etc. The Aryas divided first into two groups--the eastern, from which, in turn, sprang the Zend and Sanscrit-speaking Aryas or Iranians and Hindus--and the western group, ancestors of the various European races. Of these latter, one branch immigrated into Greece and Italy, there giving rise again to Ionians and Dorians, Italiots and Latins, and the Greek and Latin languages; while another formed the Gaels or Gadheals and Kimri, the Gadhealic and the Brizonec being the principal dialects. Then we have their offshoots--as Belgæ, Kimbro-Belgæ, Finnic-Belgæ, etc. So also the Slavic stem, split into Serb, Wendish, etc.] VII. ASSYRIANS AND BABYLONIANS. AUTHORITIES: _Rawlinson, Duncker, Oppert, M. von Niebuhr, etc._