family from the old ones; for as grazing farms were commonly in remote
and cheap places, and each shepherd lived in a cottage apart, his
marriage and increase were not liable to the same inconveniences as
in dearer places and where many servants lived in a family, which was
universally the case in such of the Roman farms as produced wine or
corn. If we consider this exception with regard to the shepherds, and
weigh the reasons of it, it will serve for a strong confirmation of all
our foregoing suspicions.
Columella, I own, advises the master to give a reward, and even liberty
to a female slave that had reared him above three children, a proof
that sometimes the ancients propagated from their slaves, which,
indeed, cannot be denied. Were it otherwise the practice of slavery,
being so common in antiquity, must have been destructive to a degree
which no expedient could repair. All I pretend to infer from these
reasonings is that slavery is in general disadvantageous both to the
happiness and populousness of mankind, and that its place is much
better supplied by the practice of hired servants.
The laws, or, as some writers call them, the seditions of the Gracchi,
were occasioned by their observing the increase of slaves all over
Italy, and the diminution of free citizens. Appian ascribes this
increase to the propagation of the slaves; Plutarch to the purchasing
of barbarians, who were chained and imprisoned, βαρβαρικα
δεσμωτηρια. It is to be presumed that both causes concurred.
Sicily, says Florus, was full of _ergastula_, and was cultivated by
labourers in chains. Eunus and Athenio excited the servile war by
breaking up these monstrous prisons and giving liberty to 60,000
slaves. The younger Pompey augmented his army in Spain by the same
expedient. If the country-labourers throughout the Roman Empire were
so generally in this situation, and if it was difficult or impossible
to find separate lodgings for the families of the city-servants,
how unfavourable to propagation, as well as to humanity, must the
institution of domestic slavery be esteemed.
Constantinople at present requires the same recruits of slaves from
all the provinces which Rome did of old, and these provinces are of
consequence far from being populous.
Egypt, according to Monsieur Maillet, sends continual colonies of black
slaves to the other parts of the Turkish Empire, and receives annually
an equal return of white; the one brought from the inland parts of
Africa, the other from Mingrella, Circassia, and Tartary.
Our modern convents are no doubt very bad institutions, but there is
reason to suspect that anciently every great family in Italy, and
probably in other parts of the world, was a species of convent. And
though we have reason to detest all those popish institutions as
nurseries of the most abject superstition, burdensome to the public
and oppressive to the poor prisoners, male as well as female, yet may
it be questioned whether they be so destructive to the populousness
of a state as is commonly imagined. Were the land which belongs to a
convent bestowed on a nobleman, he would spend its revenue on dogs,
horses, grooms, footmen, cooks, and housemaids, and his family would
not furnish many more citizens than the convent.
The common reason why parents thrust their daughters into nunneries
is that they may not be overburdened with too numerous a
family; but the ancients had a method almost as innocent and more
effectual to that purpose—viz., the exposing their children in
the earliest infancy. This practice was very common, and is not
mentioned by any author of those times with the horror it deserves, or
scarce[53] even with disapprobation. Plutarch—the humane, good-natured
Plutarch[54]—recommends it as a virtue in Attalus, King of Pergamus,
that he murdered, or, if you will, exposed all his own children
in order to leave his crown to the son of his brother, Eumenes,
signalising in this manner his gratitude and affection to Eumenes, who
had left him his heir preferable to that son. It was Solon, the most
celebrated of the sages of Greece, who gave parents permission by law
to kill their children.
Shall we then allow these two circumstances to compensate each
other—viz., monastic vows and the exposing of children, and to be
unfavourable in equal degrees to the propagation of mankind? I doubt
the advantage is here on the side of antiquity. Perhaps, by an odd
connection of causes, the barbarous practice of the ancients might
rather render those times more populous. By removing the terrors of too
numerous a family it would engage many people in marriage, and such is
the force of natural affection that very few in comparison would have
resolution enough to carry into execution their former intentions.
China, the only country where this cruel practice of exposing children
prevails at present, is the most populous country we know, and every
man is married before he is twenty. Such early marriages could scarcely
be general had not men the prospect of so easy a method of getting rid
of their children. I own that Plutarch speaks of it as a very universal
maxim of the poor to expose their children, and as the rich were then
averse to marriage on account of the courtship they met with from those
who expected legacies from them, the public must have been in a
bad situation between them.[55]
Of all sciences there is none where first appearances are more
deceitful than in politics. Hospitals for foundlings seem favourable
to the increase of numbers, and perhaps may be so when kept under
proper restrictions; but when they open the door to every one, without
distinction, they have probably a contrary effect, and are pernicious
to the state. It is computed that every ninth child born at Paris is
sent to the hospital, though it seems certain, according to the common
course of human affairs, that it is not a hundredth part whose parents
are altogether incapacitated to rear and educate them. The infinite
difference, for health, industry, and morals, between an education in
an hospital and that in a private family should induce us not to make
the entrance into an hospital too easy and engaging. To kill one’s own
child is shocking to nature, and must therefore be pretty unusual;
but to turn over the care of him upon others is very tempting to the
natural indolence of mankind.
Having considered the domestic life and manners of the ancients
compared to those of the moderns, where in the main we seem rather
superior so far as the present question is concerned, we shall now
examine the political customs and institutions of both ages, and weigh
their influence in retarding or forwarding the propagation of mankind.
Before the increase of the Roman power, or rather till its full
establishment, almost all the nations which are the scene of
ancient history were divided into small territories or petty
commonwealths, where of course a great equality of fortune prevailed,
and the centre of the government was always very near its frontiers.
This was the situation of affairs not only in Greece and Italy,
but also in Spain, Gaul, Germany, Africa, and a great part of the
Lesser Asia. And it must be owned that no institution could be more
favourable to the propagation of mankind; for though a man of an
overgrown fortune, not being able to consume more than another, must
share it with those who serve and attend him, yet their possession
being precarious, they have not the same encouragement to marriage as
if each had a small fortune secure and independent. Enormous cities
are, besides, destructive to society, beget vice and disorder of all
kinds, starve the remoter provinces, and even starve themselves by
the prices to which they raise all provisions. Where each man had his
little house and field to himself, and each county had its capital,
free and independent, what a happy situation of mankind! How favourable
to industry and agriculture, to marriage and propagation! The prolific
virtue of men, were it to act in its full extent, without that
restraint which poverty and necessity imposes on it, would double the
number every generation; and nothing surely can give it more liberty
than such small commonwealths, and such an equality of fortune among
the citizens. All small states naturally produce equality of fortune
because they afford no opportunities of great increase, but small
commonwealths much more by that division of power and authority which
is essential to them.
When Xenophon returned after the famous expedition with Cyrus, he hired
himself and 6000 of the Greeks into the service of Seuthes, a prince of
Thrace; and the articles of his agreement were that each soldier should
receive a daric a month, each captain two darics, and he himself, as
general, four; a regulation of pay which would not a little surprise
our modern officers.
Demosthenes and Æschines, with eight more, were sent ambassadors to
Philip of Macedon, and their appointments for above four months
were a thousand drachmas, which is less than a drachma a day for each
ambassador. But a drachma a day—nay, sometimes two, was the pay of a
common foot-soldier.
A centurion among the Romans had only double pay to a private man in
Polybius’s time, and we accordingly find the gratuities after a triumph
regulated by that proportion. But Mark Anthony and the triumvirate
gave the centurions five times the reward of the other; so much had
the increase of the commonwealth increased the inequality among the
citizens.[56]
It must be owned that the situation of affairs in modern times with
regard to civil liberty, as well as equality of fortune, is not near
so favourable either to the propagation or happiness of mankind.
Europe is shared out mostly into great monarchies, and such parts of
it as are divided into small territories are commonly governed by
absolute princes, who ruin their people by a mimicry of the greater
monarchs in the splendour of their court and number of their forces.
Switzerland alone and Holland resemble the ancient republics, and
though the former is far from possessing any advantage either of
soil, climate, or commerce, yet the numbers of people with which it
abounds, notwithstanding their enlisting themselves into every service
in Europe, prove sufficiently the advantages of their political
institutions.
The ancient republics derived their chief or only security from the
numbers of their citizens. The Trachinians having lost great numbers
of their people, the remainder, instead of enriching themselves by
the inheritance of their fellow-citizens, applied to Sparta, their
metropolis, for a new stock of inhabitants. The Spartans immediately
collected ten thousand men, among whom the old citizens divided the
lands of which the former proprietors had perished.
After Timoleon had banished Dionysius from Syracuse and had
settled the affairs of Sicily, finding the cities of Syracuse and
Sellinuntium extremely depopulated by tyranny, war, and faction,
he invited over from Greece some new inhabitants to repeople them.
Immediately forty thousand men (Plutarch says sixty thousand) offered
themselves, and he distributed so many lots of land among them, to the
great satisfaction of the ancient inhabitants; a proof at once of the
maxims of ancient policy, which affected populousness more than riches,
and of the good effects of these maxims in the extreme populousness
of that small country Greece, which could at once supply so large a
colony. The case was not much different with the Romans in early times.
“He is a pernicious citizen,” said M. Curius, “who cannot be contented
with seven acres.”[57] Such ideas of equality could not fail of
producing great numbers of people.
We must now consider what disadvantages the ancients lay under with
regard to populousness, and what checks they received from their
political maxims and institutions. There are commonly compensations in
every human condition, and though these compensations be not always
perfectly equal, yet they serve, at least, to restrain the prevailing
principle. To compare them and estimate their influence is indeed
very difficult, even where they take place in the same age, and in
neighbouring countries; but where several ages have intervened, and
only scattered lights are afforded us by ancient authors, what can we
do but amuse ourselves by talking, _pro_ and _con_, on an interesting
subject, and thereby correcting all hasty and violent determinations?
First, we may observe that the ancient republics were almost in
perpetual war, a natural effect of their martial spirit, their love
of liberty, their mutual emulation, and that hatred which generally
prevails among nations that live in a close neighbourhood. Now, war
in a small state is much more destructive than in a great one, both
because all the inhabitants in the former case must serve in the
armies, and because the state is all frontier and all exposed to the
inroads of the enemy.
The maxims of ancient war were much more destructive than those of
modern, chiefly by the distribution of plunder, in which the soldiers
were indulged. The private men in our armies are such a low set of
people that we find any abundance beyond their simple pay breeds
confusion and disorder, and a total dissolution of discipline. The very
wretchedness and meanness of those who fill the modern armies render
them less destructive to the countries which they invade; one instance,
among many, of the deceitfulness of first appearances in all political
reasonings.[58]
Ancient battles were much more bloody by the very nature of the weapons
employed in them. The ancients drew up their men sixteen or twenty,
sometimes fifty men deep, which made a narrow front, and it was not
difficult to find a field in which both armies might be marshalled and
might engage with each other. Even where any body of the troops was
kept off by hedges, hillocks, woods, or hollow ways, the battle was
not so soon decided between the contending parties but that the others
had time to overcome the difficulties which opposed them and take part
in the engagement. And as the whole armies were thus engaged, and each
man closely buckled to his antagonist, the battles were commonly very
bloody, and great slaughter was made on both sides, especially on the
vanquished. The long thin lines required by firearms, and the
quick decision of the fray, render our modern engagements but partial
rencounters, and enable the general who is foiled in the beginning
of the day to draw off the greatest part of his army, sound and
entire. Could Folard’s project of the column take place (which seems
impracticable[59]) it would render modern battles as destructive as
the ancient.
The battles of antiquity, both by their duration and their resemblance
of single combats, were wrought up to a degree of fury quite unknown to
later ages. Nothing could then engage the combatants to give quarter
but the hopes of profit by making slaves of their prisoners. In civil
wars, as we learn from Tacitus, the battles were the most bloody,
because the prisoners were not slaves.
What a stout resistance must be made where the vanquished expected so
hard a fate! How inveterate the rage where the maxims of war were, in
every respect, so bloody and severe!
Instances are very frequent in ancient history of cities besieged whose
inhabitants, rather than open their gates, murdered their wives and
children, and rushed themselves on a voluntary death, sweetened perhaps
with a little prospect of revenge upon the enemy. Greeks as well as
barbarians have been often wrought up to this degree of fury. And the
same determined spirit and cruelty must, in many other instances less
remarkable, have been extremely destructive to human society in those
petty commonwealths which lived in a close neighbourhood, and were
engaged in perpetual wars and contentions.
Sometimes the wars in Greece, says Plutarch, were carried on entirely
by inroads and robberies and piracies. Such a method of war must be
more destructive in small states than the bloodiest battles and sieges.
By the laws of the twelve tables, possession for two years
formed a prescription for land; one year for movables;[60] an
indication that there was not in Italy during that period much more
order, tranquillity, and settled police than there is at present among
the Tartars.
The only cartel I remember in ancient history is that between Demetrius
Poliorcetes and the Rhodians, when it was agreed that a free citizen
should be restored for 1000 drachmas, a slave bearing arms for 500.
But, secondly, it appears that ancient manners were more unfavourable
than the modern, not only in times of war but also in those of peace;
and that too in every respect, except the love of civil liberty and
equality, which is, I own, of considerable importance. To exclude
faction from a free government is very difficult, if not altogether
impracticable; but such inveterate rage between the factions and
such bloody maxims are found, in modern times, amongst religious
parties alone, where bigoted priests are the accusers, judges, and
executioners. In ancient history we may always observe, where one
party prevailed, whether the nobles or people (for I can observe no
difference in this respect[61]), that they immediately butchered all
of the opposite party who fell into their hands, and banished such as
had been so fortunate as to escape their fury. No form of process, no
law, no trial, no pardon. A fourth, a third, perhaps near a half of
the city were slaughtered or expelled every revolution; and the exiles
always joined foreign enemies and did all the mischief possible to
their fellow-citizens, till fortune put it in their power to take full
revenge by a new revolution. And as these were very frequent in such
violent governments, the disorder, diffidence, jealousy, enmity which
must prevail are not easy for us to imagine in this age of the world.
There are only two revolutions I can recollect in ancient history
which passed without great severity and great effusion of blood in
massacres and assassinations—viz., the restoration of the Athenian
democracy by Thrasybulus, and the subduing the Roman republic by
Cæsar. We learn from ancient history that Thrasybulus passed a general
amnesty for all past offences, and first introduced that word as well
as practice into Greece. It appears, however, from many orations of
Lysias, that the chief, and even some of the subaltern offenders in
the preceding tyranny were tried and capitally punished. This is a
difficulty not cleared up, and even not observed by antiquarians and
historians. And as to Cæsar’s clemency, though much celebrated, it
would not gain great applause in the present age. He butchered, for
instance, all Cato’s senate, when he became master of Utica; and these,
we may readily believe, were not the most worthless of the party. All
those who had borne arms against that usurper were forfeited, and, by
Hirtius’s law, declared incapable of all public offices.
These people were extremely fond of liberty, but seem not to have
understood it very well. When the Thirty Tyrants first established
their dominion at Athens, they began with seizing all the sycophants
and informers who had been so troublesome during the Democracy, and
putting them to death by an arbitrary sentence and execution. “Every
man,” says Sallust and Lysias,[62] “rejoiced at these punishments;”
not considering that liberty was from that moment annihilated.
The utmost energy of the nervous style of Thucydides, and the
copiousness and expression of the Greek language, seem to sink under
that historian when he attempts to describe the disorders which arose
from faction throughout all the Greek commonwealths. You would
imagine that he still labours with a thought greater than he can find
words to communicate, and he concludes his pathetic description with
an observation which is at once very refined and very solid. “In
these contests,” says he, “those who were dullest and most stupid,
and had the least foresight, commonly prevailed; for being conscious
of this weakness, and dreading to be over-reached by those of greater
penetration, they went to work hastily, without premeditation, by the
sword and poniard, and thereby prevented their antagonists, who were
forming fine schemes and projects for their destruction.”[63]
Not to mention Dionysius the elder, who is computed to have butchered
in cold blood above 10,000 of his fellow-citizens, nor Agathocles,
Nabis, and others still more bloody than he, the transactions, even in
free governments, were extremely violent and destructive. At Athens,
the Thirty Tyrants and the nobles in a twelvemonth murdered, without
trial, about 1200 of the people, and banished above the half of the
citizens that remained.[64] In Argos, near the same time, the people
killed 1200 of the nobles, and afterwards their own demagogues, because
they had refused to carry their prosecutions further. The people also
in Corcyra killed 1500 of the nobles and banished a thousand. These
numbers will appear the more surprising if we consider the
extreme smallness of these states. But all ancient history is full of
such instances.[65]
When Alexander ordered all the exiles to be restored through all the
cities, it was found that the whole amounted to 20,000 men, the remains
probably of still greater slaughters and massacres. What an astonishing
multitude in so narrow a country as ancient Greece! And what domestic
confusion, jealousy, partiality, revenge, heart-burnings must tear
those cities, where factions were wrought up to such a degree of fury
and despair!
“It would be easier,” says Isocrates to Philip, “to raise an
army in Greece at present from the vagabonds than from the cities.”
Even where affairs came not to such extremities (which they failed not
to do almost in every city twice or thrice every century), property was
rendered very precarious by the maxims of ancient government. Xenophon,
in the banquet of Socrates, gives us a very natural, unaffected
description of the tyranny of the Athenian people. “In my poverty,”
says Charmides, “I am much more happy than ever I was while possessed
of riches; as much as it is happier to be in security than in terrors,
free than a slave, to receive than to pay court, to be trusted than
suspected. Formerly I was obliged to caress every informer, some
imposition was continually laid upon me, and it was never allowed me to
travel or be absent from the city. At present, when I am poor, I look
big and threaten others. The rich are afraid of me, and show me every
kind of civility and respect, and I am become a kind of tyrant in the
city.”
In one of the pleadings of Lysias, the orator very coolly speaks of it,
by the by, as a maxim of the Athenian people, that whenever they wanted
money they put to death some of the rich citizens as well as strangers,
for the sake of the forfeiture. In mentioning this, he seems to have no
intention of blaming them, still less of provoking them who were his
audience and judges.
Whether a man was a citizen or a stranger among that people, it seems
indeed requisite either that he should impoverish himself or the people
would impoverish him, and perhaps kill him into the bargain. The orator
last mentioned gives a pleasant account of an estate laid out in the
public service[66]—that is, above the third of it in raree-shows and
figured dances.
I need not insist on the Greek tyrannies, which were altogether
horrible. Even the mixed monarchies, by which most of the ancient
states of Greece were governed before the introduction of republics,
were very unsettled. Scarce any city but Athens, says Isocrates, could
show a succession of kings for four or five generations.