24» GOVERNMENT. under favourable circumstances, would hardly fail to overthrow the power of the inferior nobles, and render them in time, not the hereditary despots of their little principalities, but the mere creatures of his will, and the instruments of his power in the provinces. It was thus that, on the introduction of the Mahomedan religion among the Macassars, a succession of able princes, with the influence ac- quired by their extensive conquests, seem to have put them in the way of becoming absolute. The possession of wealth, the necessary conse- quence of a soil of great fertility, encouraged in Java the progress of absolute power, by strengthen- ing the hands of those in authority. The devo- tion of the people to agricultural industry, by ren- dering themselves more tame, and more at the mercy of power than the wandering tribes, and their pro- perty more tangible, went still farther towards it, for wherever, in the east, agriculture is the princi- pal pursuit, there it may certainly be reckoned, that the people will be found living under an ab- solute government. * The influence of Hindu and ♦ This fact is finely illustrated by Humboldt in the fol- lowing passage, which did not occur to' me until I had writ- ten what is in the text. " The northern provinces, New Bis- cay, Sonora, and New Mexico, were very thinly inhabited in the sixteenth century. The natives were hunters and shep- herds ! and they withdrew as the European conquerors ad- vanced towards the north. Agriculture alone attaches man
