From the right which the Government claims to inheritances, and the ruinous fines paid on readmission, those who have landed property frequently make this appropriation to the mosque, and their lands become part of the _wakf_ of that establishment. The Government then has no farther claim on them. But the appropriator takes care, at the same time, that his next heir, or if a minor, trustees on his behalf, under the name of _Mutwâlli_, shall receive the rents, and so on, as long as any heirs remain in the family. The individual continues in the secure receipt of his income, paying however annually a small proportion of it to the administrators of the mosque. It will hence be observed, that in Egypt, a large proportion of the tenants and cultivators hold either of the Government, or the procurators of the mosques. To the personal ease of the cultivator, and the general good of the whole, it is of little consequence which. For there is one circumstance common to them both, viz. that their lands, becoming unoccupied, are never let but on terms ruinous to the tenant. For as there is a number of bidders, and the managers of them are exorbitant in their demands, the tenant becomes accessory to his own misery, by engaging to pay the owner so large a portion of the product, that his profits are absolutely insignificant. These contracts are of various forms, but commonly made for a given number of years, or for life, in the nature of leases. The occupier, assisted by his family, is the cultivator; and in the operations of husbandry scarcely requires any other aid. When the Nile rises, those who are employed to water the fields are commonly hired labourers. Volney[13] has said generally, that the peasants of Egypt are _hired labourers_. It will hence be seen to how small a portion of them those terms can be properly applied. The hired servants of the great are paid chiefly by having their food provided for them, and receiving occasionally presents of clothes; excepting what they obtain by extortion, opportunities of which are given even to the lowest menial, by the system of terror established in the country. The tenant of land commonly holds no more than he and his family can cultivate, and gather the produce of. Yet he is far from being a villain, attached to the soil, having always the power of quitting his farm to obtain another in a different quarter. It however often happens, that families are connected with a particular spot for a great length of time. I have met with persons of that description at _Ben-Ali_ near Assiût, whose ancestors of the fifth remove had resided in the same spot. “I used to smoke tobacco,” (said one of them, a very old man,) “but it cost me almost a para a-day, and times are always growing worse, so now I am satisfied with a dry reed, till the master (ربنا) free me from these embarrassments.”