ABSTRACT
The progress of social order, the additional security, the protection which government holds out to the rights of all, together with the increase of population, induce the cultivator to entrust to the ground, for a longer or shorter time, the labour which constitutes his wealth. But when population and wealth have at last increased so as to make every kind of labour easy, and when social order inspires security enough to induce the husbandman to fix his labour in the ground, and transmit it with the soil to his descendants, improvement altogether changes the appearance of the earth. Then are formed those plantations of gardens, orchards, vineyards, the enjoyment of which is destined for a late posterity; then are dug those canals for draining or irrigation, which diffuse fertility; then arise upon the hills those hanging terraces, which characterized the agriculture of ancient Canaan.
