In Shoa this principle is carried out for the sole benefit of the monarch, and Paley’s metaphor of the lording pigeon, over the productive wealth of the whole dovecote, typifies exactly the respective conditions of the Shoans and their Negoos. The strictly selfish and monopolizing rule, established by the sagacious monarch, has reduced all his people to the most abject state of submission, dependent upon him for every kind of property they possess. Most fortunately for them, he is a just and good man, for he can give and take away at pleasure; and thus holding wealth and honour in one hand, and poverty and wretchedness in the other, he has made himself the point upon which turns human happiness; and that kind of demon worship which propitiates spirits supposed to have the power of inflicting evil is, in consequence, paid to Sahale Selassee, who could at any moment reduce to a beggar the richest, and most powerful of his slaves. It is no fiction of the Shoan law, that everything in the country is the positive property of the monarch. He can, without assigning any reason, dispossess the present holder and confer his wealth upon another, or retain it for his own use. He can demand the services of all his people at all times, who must perform everything required of them, to build palaces, construct bridges, till the royal demesnes, or fight his enemies. They are, from first to last, both rich and poor, the mere slaves of one sole lord and master, and scarcely a day passes over but in some way or other the most wealthy are obliged to confess it, or run the risk of being denounced as an enemy to the sovereign, which would be followed by confiscation of all property, or incarceration in Guancho, the State prison, with a heavy fine imposed. Nor do the Shoans, born and educated in this servile condition, consider such exercises of power as acts of tyranny; on the contrary, with loud protestations of their own loyalty, all the neighbours and late friends of the unfortunate individual so punished would with one accord ejaculate, “Our good King! Our good King! alas! alas! to have such an ungrateful servant!” meaning the dispossessed man of course. Samuel’s expostulation with the Jews[9] when they demanded a King, often recurred to me at the various instances of what I at first considered to be undue demands for ploughing, or gathering in the harvest, or building store-houses for the Negoos, which were made upon the people whilst I was in the country, and who, at the bidding of the overseers appointed to see the required work done, were obliged to leave their own business, find their own tools, material, and cattle, to perform whatever was required.