much later in extending themselves into the
inland parts of the country. The inland parts
of the country can for a long time have no
other market for the greater part of their
goods, but the country which lies round about
them, and separates them from the sea-coast,
and the great navigable rivers. The extent
of the market, therefore, must for a long time
be in proportion to the riches and populousness
of that country, and consequently their
improvement must always be posterior to the
improvement of that country. In our North
American colonies, the plantations have constantly
followed either the sea-coast or the
banks of the navigable rivers, and have scarce
anywhere extended themselves to any considerable
distance from both.
The nations that, according to the best authenticated
history, appear to have been first
civilized, were those that dwelt round the coast
of the Mediterranean sea. That sea, by far
the greatest inlet that is known in the world,
having no tides, nor consequently any waves,
except such as are caused by the wind only,
was, by the smoothness of its surface, as well
as by the multitude of its islands, and the
proximity of its neighbouring shores, extremely
favourable to the infant navigation of the
world; when, from their ignorance of the
compass, men were afraid to quit the view of
the coast, and from the imperfection of the art
of ship-building, to abandon themselves to the
boisterous waves of the ocean. To pass beyond
the pillars of Hercules, that is, to sail out of
the straits of Gibraltar, was, in the ancient
world, long considered as a most wonderful
and dangerous exploit of navigation. It was
late before even the Phœnicians and Carthaginians,
the most skilful navigators and ship-builders
of those old times, attempted it; and
they were, for a long time, the only nations
that did attempt it.
Of all the countries on the coast of the Mediterranean
sea, Egypt seems to have been the
first in which either agriculture or manufactures
were cultivated and improved to any
considerable degree. Upper Egypt extends
itself nowhere above a few miles from the
Nile; and in Lower Egypt, that great river
breaks itself into many different canals, which,
with the assistance of a little art, seem to have
afforded a communication by water-carriage,
not only between all the great towns, but between
all the considerable villages, and even
to many farm-houses in the country, nearly
in the same manner as the Rhine and the
Maese do in Holland at present. The extent
and easiness of this inland navigation was
probably one of the principal causes of the
early improvement of Egypt.
The improvements in agriculture and manufactures
seem likewise to have been of very
great antiquity in the provinces of Bengal in
the East Indies, and in some of the eastern
provinces of China, though the great extent
of this antiquity is not authenticated by any
histories of whose authority we, in this part
of the world, are well assured. In Bengal,
the Ganges, and several other great rivers,
form a great number of navigable canals, in
the same manner as the Nile does in Egypt.
In the eastern provinces of China, too, several
great rivers form, by their different branches,
a multitude of canals, and, by communicating
with one another, afford an inland navigation
much more extensive than that either of the
Nile or the Ganges, or, perhaps, than both of
them put together. It is remarkable, that neither
the ancient Egyptians, nor the Indians,
nor the Chinese, encouraged foreign commerce,
but seem all to have derived their great
opulence from this inland navigation.
All the inland parts of Africa, and all that
part of Asia which lies any considerable way
north of the Euxine and Caspian seas, the ancient
Scythia, the modern Tartary and Siberia,
seem, in all ages of the world, to have
been in the same barbarous and uncivilized
state in which we find them at present. The
sea of Tartary is the frozen ocean, which admits
of no navigation; and though some of
the greatest rivers in the world run through
that country, they are at too great a distance
from one another to carry commerce and communication
through the greater part of it.
There are in Africa none of those great inlets,
such as the Baltic and Adriatic seas in
Europe, the Mediterranean and Euxine seas
in both Europe and Asia, and the gulfs of
Arabia, Persia, India, Bengal, and Siam, in
Asia, to carry maritime commerce into the interior
parts of that great continent; and the
great rivers of Africa are at too great a distance
from one another to give occasion to any
considerable inland navigation. The commerce,
besides, which any nation can carry on
by means of a river which does not break itself
into any great number of branches or canals,
and which runs into another territory before
it reaches the sea, can never be very considerable,
because it is always in the power of
the nations who possess that other territory to
obstruct the communication between the upper
country and the sea. The navigation of
the Danube is of very little use to the different
states of Bavaria, Austria, and Hungary,
in comparison of what it would be, if any of
them possessed the whole of its course, till it
falls into the Black sea.
CHAP. IV.
OF THE ORIGIN AND USE OF MONEY.
When the division of labor has been once
thoroughly established, it is but a very small