It may be urged, with regard to climate, that the heat of all parts of Syria is too intense to admit of English labourers being employed in the cultivation of the immense tracts of waste land that so abound in various districts. My reply to this is, that both food and labour being extremely cheap in that country, and the produce, whether grain or silk, disposable at an enormous profit in the English markets, the proceeds of such sales would enable the small capitalist to employ sufficient labourers under him; so that, in short, he would be simply a teacher and overseer, managing his own property, and could, in a very few years, afford to have an official in his pay, whilst he himself perhaps might be, with his family, enjoying a cheap jaunt to his own country.
But there is also another large class of emigrants, to whose means and occupations Syria is even better suited than to all the foregoing. I mean persons of a certain fixed moderate income; those in receipt of an annual rent or interest, varying in amount from £50 to £300. A man in London, especially if he have a wife and family to support, is comparatively a pauper if he can earn no more than £50 per annum. Take that man to Syria; plant him in any part of Lebanon, or in any other district of that country, and he has no longer pounds and shillings to mete out carefully, so as to cover the annual outlay for household expenses; but he has now to deal with piastres and paras. For one piastre he can get four ordinary penny loaves; for half a piastre he can get five eggs; for another half, as much fresh butter and milk as will serve his purpose for the day, and unless he be an extraordinary eater, leave an abundant surplus. Thus for two piastres we have seen him provided with milk, butter, and bread—three staple commodities—and the additional luxury of fresh-laid eggs. An _oak_, or 2¾ lbs. of mutton, would cost him about two and a half piastres, and he spends a piastre in vegetables and fruit; thus the raw articles of consumption cost him daily five and a half piastres, or just one shilling sterling. With sixpence additional, he can have fish and wine and coffee, an ample supply of each, enough indeed to satisfy the cravings of three moderate men; so that his annual item for food, wine, and coffee, would amount to 547 shillings and sixpence, or £27 17s. 6d. Of his original income of £50 per annum, he would thus still have a surplus of £22 2s. 6d. His rent and the hire of three servants, their keep included, may consume £10 of this balance, and with the remaining £12 2s. 6d. he could buy and keep for the whole first year a very serviceable steed, whose cost would be more than recompensed by the benefit and pleasure of horse-exercise every day in the week.