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APPENDIX.

this high improvement of their more curiousmanufactures excited the admiration', and attractedthe commerce, of other nations, the separation ofprofessions in India, and the early distribution ofthe people into classes, attached to particular kinds oflabor , secured such abundance of the more com-mon and useful commodities, as not only suppliedtheir own wants, but ministered to those of thecountries around them.

To this early division of the people into casts,we must likewise ascribe a striking peculiarity inthe state of India; the permanence of its institu-tions , and the immutability in the manners of itsinhabitants. What now is in India, always wasthere, and is likely stfil to continue: neither theferocious violence and illiberal fanaticism of itsMahomedan conquerors, nor the power of itsEuropean masters, have effected any considerablealteration 7 . The same distinctions of conditiontake place, the same arrangements in civil anddomestic society remain , the same maxims ofreligion are held in veneration, and the samesciences and arts are cultivated. Hence , in allages, the trade with India has been the same;gold and silver have uniformly been carried thitherin order to purchase the same commodities withwhich it now supplies-all nations; and from theage of Pliny to the present times , it has beenalways considered and execrated as a gulf which

* See NOTE II.