Continuation of the description of Russia, population, finances,
armies, customs, religion: state of Russia before Peter the Great.
The more civilized a country is, the better it is peopled. Thus China
and India are more populous than any other empires, because, after a
multitude of revolutions, which changed the face of sublunary affairs,
these two nations made the earliest establishments in civil society: the
antiquity of their government, which has subsisted upwards of four
thousand years, supposes, as we have already observed, many essays and
efforts in preceding ages. The Russians came very late; but the arts
having been introduced amongst them in their full perfection, it has
happened, that they have made more progress in fifty years, than any
other nation had done before them in five hundred. The country is far
from being populous, in proportion to its extent; but, such as it is, it
has as great a number of inhabitants as any other state in Christendom.
From the capitation lists, and the register of merchants, artificers,
and male peasants, I might safely assert, that Russia, at present,
contains at least twenty-four millions of male inhabitants: of these
twenty-four millions, the greatest part are villains or bondmen, as in
Poland, several provinces of Germany, and formerly throughout all
Europe. The estate of a gentleman in Russia and Poland is computed, not
by his increase in money, but by the number of his slaves.
The following is a list, taken in 1747, of all the males who paid the
capitation or poll-tax:--