‘The richest soil in Europe, Italy, is full of beggars; among the Grisons, the poorest country in Europe, there are no beggars. The bailage of Lugane is the worst country, the least productive, the most exposed to cold and the least capable of trade of any in all Italy, and yet is the best peopled. If ever this country is brought under a yoke like that which the rest of Italy bears, it will soon be abandoned, for nothing draws so many people to live in so bad a soil, when they are in sight of the best soil in Europe, but the easiness of the government.’ Burnet’s Travels. ‘Italy shews, in a very striking light, the advantages of free government.[19] The subjects of the Italian republics are thriving and happy. Those under the Pope, the dukes of Tuscany, Florence &c. wretched in the extreme.—Lucca, to mention no other, is a remarkable instance of the happy effects of liberty. The whole dominion is but thirty miles round, yet contains, besides the city, 150 villages, 120,000 inhabitants, and all the soil is cultivated to the utmost. Their magistrates are re-elected every two months out of a body of nobility, who are chosen every two years.’ Modern Universal History. See also A. Sydney as before quoted.—These differences cannot be accounted for by the length of time or the force with which the principle of population has operated in these states. The countries are equally old, and the climate very nearly the same. ‘In England an industrious subject has the best chance for thriving, because the country is the freest. In the Mogul’s dominions the worst, because the country is the most effectually enslaved.’ ‘The title of freemen was formerly confined chiefly to the nobility and gentry, who were descended of free ancestors. _For the greatest part of the people_ was restrained under some species of slavery, so that they were not their own masters.’ Spelman’s Glossary.[20]—On this passage my author remarks very gravely, ‘What has been in England may be again. If liberty be on the decline, no one knows how low it may sink, and to what pitch of slavery and cruelty it may grow.’ Mr. Malthus’s theory tends to familiarise the mind to such a change as the necessary effect of the progress of population. But this pretext is here clearly done away, as we have fought up to our present free, and flourishing state, in the _teeth_ of this principle. Our progress has not been uniformly _retrograde_, as it ought to have been to make any thing of the argument. ‘It is constantly (said a member in Queen Elizabeth’s time) in the mouths of us all, that our lands, goods and laws are at our prince’s disposal.’ We do not at present come _quite_ up to the loyalty of this speaker.