ted, accounts which we have of them, all is power, splendour, and riches, attended by the luxury which was the necessary consequence, without any clue or thread left us by which we can remount, or be conducted, to the source or fountain whence this variety of wealth had flowed; without ever being able to arrive at a period, when these people were poor and mean, or even in a state of mediocrity, or upon a footing with European nations.
The sacred scriptures, the most ancient, as well as the most credible of all histories, represent Palestine, of which they particularly treat, in the earliest ages, as not only full of polished, powerful, and orderly states, but abounding also in silver and gold *[1], in a greater proportion than is to be found this day in any state in Europe, though immensely rich dominions in a new world have been added to the possession of that territory, which furnished the greatest quantity of gold and silver to the old. Palestine, however, is a poor country, left to its own resources and produce merely. It must have been always a poor country, without some extraordinary connection with foreign nations. It never contained either mines of gold or silver, and though, at most periods of its history, it appears to have been but thinly inhabited, it never of itself produced wherewithal to support and maintain the few that dwelt in it.
Mr de Montesquieu †[2], speaking of the wealth of Semiramis, imagines that the great riches of the Assyrian
- Exod. xxxviii 39. † Lib. 21. cap. 6.
