Chapter VI: Part 6

The legislature established at Rome by the authority of Servius Tullius was the _comitia centuriata_, which, after the expulsion of the kings, rendered the government for some time altogether aristocratical. But the people, having numbers and force on their side, and being elated with frequent conquests and victories in their foreign wars, always prevailed when pushed to extremities, and first extorted from the senate the magistracy of the tribunes, and then the legislative power of the _comitia tributa_. It then behoved the nobles to be more careful than ever not to provoke the people, for beside the force which the latter were always possessed of, they had now got possession of legal authority, and could instantly break in pieces any order or institution which directly opposed them. By intrigue, by influence, by money, by combination, and by the respect paid their character, the nobles might often prevail and direct the whole machine of government; but had they openly set their _comitia centuriata_ in opposition to the _tributa_, they had soon lost the advantage of that institution, together with their consuls, prætors, ediles, and all the magistrates elected by it. But the _comitia tributa_, not having the same reason for respecting the _centuriata_, frequently repealed laws favourable to the aristocracy; they limited the authority of the nobles, protected the people from oppression, and controlled the actions of the senate and magistracy. The _centuriata_ found it convenient always to submit; and though equal in authority, yet being inferior in power, durst never directly give any shock to the other legislature, either by repealing its laws or establishing laws, which, it foresaw, would soon be repealed by it.

No instance is found of any opposition or struggle between these _comitia_, except one slight attempt of this kind mentioned by Appian in the third book of his Civil Wars. Mark Antony, resolving to deprive Decimus Brutus of the government of Cisalpine Gaul, railed in the forum, and called one of the _comitia_ in order to prevent the meeting of the other which had been ordered by the senate; but affairs were then fallen into such confusion, and the Roman constitution was so near its final dissolution, that no inference can be drawn from such an expedient. This contest, besides, was founded more on form than party. It was the senate who ordered the _comitia tributa_ that they might obstruct the meeting of the _centuriata_, which, by the constitution, or at least forms of the government, could alone dispose of provinces.

Cicero was recalled by the _comitia centuriata_, though banished by the _tributa_—that is, by a _plebiscitum_. But his banishment, we may observe, never was considered as a legal deed, arising from the free choice and inclination of the people. It was always ascribed to the violence alone of Clodius, and to the disorders introduced by him into the government.

III. The third custom which we proposed to observe regards England, and though it be not so important as those which we have pointed out in Athens and Rome, it is no less singular and remarkable. It is a maxim in politics which we readily admit as undisputed and universal, that a power, however great, when granted by law to an eminent magistrate is not so dangerous to liberty as an authority, however considerable, which he acquires from violence and usurpation; for, besides that the law always limits every power which it bestows, the very receiving it as a concession establishes the authority whence it is derived and preserves the harmony of the constitution. By the same right that one prerogative is assumed without law another may also be claimed, and another with still greater facility; while the first usurpations both serve as precedents to the following, and give force to maintain them. Hence the heroism of Hampden, who sustained the whole violence of royal prosecution rather than pay a tax of twenty shillings not imposed by Parliament; hence the care of all English patriots to guard against the first encroachments of the crown, and hence alone the existence at this day of English liberty.

There is, however, one occasion where the Parliament has departed from this maxim, and this is in the pressing of seamen. The exercise of an illegal power is here tacitly permitted in the crown, and though it has frequently been under deliberation how that power might be rendered legal and granted under proper restrictions to the sovereign, no safe expedient could ever be proposed for that purpose, and the danger to liberty always appeared greater from law than from usurpation. While this power is exercised to no other end than to man the Navy men willingly submit to it from a sense of its use and necessity, and the sailors, who are alone affected by it, find nobody to support them in claiming the rights and privileges which the law grants without distinction to all English subjects. But were this power on any occasion made an instrument of faction or ministerial tyranny, the opposite faction, and indeed all lovers of their country, would immediately take the alarm and support the injured party. The liberty of Englishmen would be asserted; juries would be implacable; and the tools of tyranny acting both against law and equity would meet with the severest vengeance. On the other hand, were the Parliament to grant such an authority, they would probably fall into one of these two inconveniences: they would either bestow it under so many restrictions as would make it lose its effects by cramping the authority of the crown, or they would render it so large and comprehensive as might give occasion to great abuses, for which we could in that case have no remedy. The very illegality of the power at present prevents its abuses, by affording so easy a remedy against them.

I pretend not by this reasoning to exclude all possibility of contriving a register for seamen, which might man the Navy without being dangerous to liberty. I only observe that no satisfactory scheme of that nature has yet been proposed. Rather than adopt any project hitherto invented, we continue a practice seemingly the most absurd and unaccountable. Authority, in times of full internal peace and concord, is armed against law. A continued and open usurpation of the crown is permitted amidst the greatest jealousy and watchfulness in the people; nay, proceeding from those very principles, liberty, in a country of the highest liberty, is left entirely to its own defence without any countenance or protection; the wild state of nature is renewed in one of the most civilized societies of mankind; and great violences and disorders among the people, the most human and the best-natured, are committed with impunity; while the one party pleads obedience to the supreme magistrate, the other the sanction of fundamental laws.

NOTES, OF SOME REMARKABLE CUSTOMS.

[34] His harangue for it is still extant: περι Συμμοριας.

[35] Plutarchus in _vita decem oratorum_. Demosthenes gives a different account of this law. (_Contra Aristogiton, Orat. II._) He says that its purport was to render the ατιμοι επιτιμοι, or to restore the privilege of bearing offices to those who had been declared incapable. Perhaps these were both clauses of the same law.

[36] The senate of the Bean was only a less numerous mob chosen by lot from among the people, and their authority was not great.

[37] _In Ctesiphontem._ It is remarkable that the first step after the dissolution of the Democracy by Critias and the Thirty was to annul the γραφη παρανομων, as we learn from Demosthenes κατα Τιμοκ. The orator in this oration gives us the words of the law establishing the γραφη παρανομων, p. 297, _ex edit._ _Aldi_. And he accounts for it from the same principles we here reason upon.

[38] Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour, part 3, § 2.

OF THE POPULOUSNESS OF ANCIENT NATIONS.[39]

There is very little ground, either from reason or experience, to conclude the universe eternal or incorruptible. The continual and rapid motion of matter, the violent revolutions with which every part is agitated, the changes remarked in the heavens, the plain traces as well as tradition of a universal deluge,—all these prove strongly the mortality of this fabric of the world, and its passage, by corruption or dissolution, from one state or order to another. It must therefore, as well as each individual form which it contains, have its infancy, youth, manhood, and old age; and it is probable that in all these variations man, equally with every animal and vegetable, will partake. In the flourishing age of the world it may be expected that the human species should possess greater vigour both of mind and body, more prosperous health, higher spirits, longer life, and a stronger inclination and power of generation. But if the general system of things, and human society of course, have any such gradual revolutions, they are too slow to be discernible in that short period which is comprehended by history and tradition. Stature and force of body, length of life, even courage and extent of genius, seem hitherto to have been naturally in all ages pretty much the same. The arts and sciences, indeed, have flourished in one period and have decayed in another; but we may observe that at the time when they rose to greatest perfection among one people they were perhaps totally unknown to all the neighbouring nations, and though they universally decayed in one age, yet in a succeeding generation they again revived and diffused themselves over the world. As far, therefore, as observation reaches there is no universal difference discernible in the human species, and though it were allowed that the universe, like an animal body, had a natural progress from infancy to old age; yet, as it must still be uncertain whether at present it be advancing to its point of perfection or declining from it, we cannot thence presuppose any decay in human nature.[40] To prove, therefore, or account for the greater populousness of antiquity by the imaginary youth or vigour of the world will scarcely be admitted by any just reasoner; these general physical causes ought entirely to be excluded from that question.

There are indeed some more particular physical causes of great importance. Diseases are mentioned in antiquity which are almost unknown to modern medicine, and new diseases have arisen and propagated themselves of which there are no traces in ancient history. And in this particular we may observe, upon comparison, that the disadvantage is very much on the side of the moderns. Not to mention some others of less importance, the smallpox commits such ravages as would almost alone account for the great superiority ascribed to ancient times. The tenth or the twelfth part of mankind destroyed every generation should make a vast difference, it may be thought, in the numbers of the people; and when joined to venereal distempers, a new plague diffused everywhere, this disease is perhaps equivalent, by its constant operation, to the three great scourges of mankind—war, pestilence, and famine. Were it certain, therefore, that ancient times were more populous than the present, and could no moral causes be assigned for so great a change, these physical causes alone, in the opinion of many, would be sufficient to give us satisfaction on that head.

But is it certain that antiquity was so much more populous as is pretended? The extravagancies of Vossius with regard to this subject are well known; but an author of much greater genius and discernment has ventured to affirm that, according to the best computations which these subjects will admit of, there are not now on the face of the earth the fiftieth part of mankind which existed in the time of Julius Cæsar. It may easily be observed that the comparisons in this case must be very imperfect, even though we confine ourselves to the scene of ancient history—Europe and the nations about the Mediterranean. We know not exactly the numbers of any European kingdom, or even city, at present; how can we pretend to calculate those of ancient cities and states where historians have left us such imperfect traces? For my part, the matter appears to me so uncertain that, as I intend to throw together some reflections on that head, I shall intermingle the inquiry concerning causes with that concerning facts, which ought never to be admitted where the facts can be ascertained with any tolerable assurance. We shall first consider whether it be probable, from what we know of the situation of society in both periods, that antiquity must have been more populous; secondly, whether in reality it was so. If I can make it appear that the conclusion is not so certain as is pretended in favour of antiquity, it is all I aspire to.

In general we may observe that the question with regard to the comparative populousness of ages or kingdoms implies very important consequences, and commonly determines concerning the preference of their whole police, their manners, and the constitution of their government. For as there is in all men, both male and female, a desire and power of generation more active than is ever universally exerted, the restraints which they lie under must proceed from some difficulties in their situation, which it belongs to a wise legislature carefully to observe and remove. Almost every man who thinks he can maintain a family will have one, and the human species at this rate of propagation would more than double every generation. How fast do mankind multiply in every colony or new settlement, where it is an easy matter to provide for a family, and where men are nowise straightened or confined as in long established governments? History tells us frequently of plagues which have swept away the third or fourth part of a people; yet in a generation or two the destruction was not perceived, and the society had again acquired their former number. The lands which were cultivated, the houses built, the commodities raised, the riches acquired, enabled the people who escaped immediately to marry and to rear families, which supplied the place of those who had perished.[41] And for a like reason every wise, just, and mild government, by rendering the condition of its subjects easy and secure, will always abound most in people, as well as in commodities and riches. A country, indeed, whose climate and soil are fitted for vines will naturally be more populous than one which is only fitted for pasturage; but if everything else be equal, it seems natural to expect that wherever there are most happiness and virtue and the wisest institutions, there will also be most people.

The question, therefore, concerning the populousness of ancient and modern times being allowed of great importance, it will be requisite, if we would bring it to some determination, to compare both the domestic and political situation of these two periods, in order to judge of the facts by their moral causes, which is the first view in which we proposed to consider them.

The chief difference between the domestic economy of the ancients and that of the moderns consists in the practice of slavery which prevailed among the former, and which has been abolished for some centuries throughout the greater part of Europe. Some passionate admirers of the ancients and zealous partisans of civil liberty (for these sentiments, as they are both of them in the main extremely just, are found to be almost inseparable) cannot forbear regretting the loss of this institution; and whilst they brand all submission to the government of a single person with the harsh denomination of slavery, they would gladly reduce the greatest part of mankind to real slavery and subjection. But to one who considers coolly on the subject it will appear that human nature in general really enjoys more liberty at present, in the most arbitrary governments of Europe, than it ever did during the most flourishing period of ancient times. As much as submission to a petty prince, whose dominions extend not beyond a single city, is more grievous than obedience to a great monarch, so much is domestic slavery more cruel and oppressive than any civil subjection whatsoever. The more the master is removed from us in place and rank the greater liberty we enjoy, the less are our actions inspected and controlled, and the fainter that cruel comparison becomes between our own subjection and the freedom and even dominion of another. The remains that are found of slavery in the American colonies and among some European nations would never surely create a desire of rendering it more universal. The little humanity commonly observed in persons accustomed from their infancy to exercise so great authority over their fellow-creatures and to trample upon human nature were sufficient alone to disgust us with that authority. Nor can a more probable reason be given for the severe, I might say barbarous manners of ancient times, than the practice of domestic slavery, by which every man of rank was rendered a petty tyrant and educated amidst the flattery, submission, and low debasement of his slaves.

According to the ancient practice, all checks were on the inferior, to restrain him to the duty of submission; none on the superior, to engage him to the reciprocal duties of gentleness and humanity. In modern times a bad servant finds not easily a good master, nor a bad master a good servant, and the checks are mutual, suitable to the inviolable and eternal laws of reason and equity.

The custom of exposing old, useless, or sick slaves in an island of the Tiber, there to starve, seems to have been pretty common in Rome, and whoever recovered after having been so exposed had his liberty given him by an edict of the Emperor Claudius, where it was likewise forbid to kill any slave merely for old age or sickness. But supposing that this edict was strictly obeyed, would it better the domestic treatment of slaves or render their lives much more comfortable? We may imagine what others would practise when it was the professed maxim of the elder Cato to sell his superannuated slaves for any price rather than maintain what he esteemed a useless burden.

The _ergastula_, or dungeons, where slaves in chains were forced to work, were very common all over Italy. Columella advises that they be always built under ground, and recommends it as the duty of a careful overseer to call over every day the names of these slaves, like the mustering of a regiment or ship’s company, in order to know presently when any of them had deserted. A proof of the frequency of these _ergastula_ and of the great number of slaves usually confined in them.

A chained slave for a porter was usual in Rome, as appears from Ovid and other authors. Had not these people shaken off all sense of compassion towards that unhappy part of their species, would they have presented all their friends at the first entrance with such an image of the severity of the master and misery of the slave?

Nothing so common in all trials, even of civil causes, as to call for the evidence of slaves, which was always extorted by the most exquisite torments. Demosthenes says that where it was possible to produce for the same fact either freemen or slaves as witnesses, the judges always preferred the torturing of slaves as a more certain and infallible evidence.[42]

Seneca draws a picture of that disorderly luxury which changes day into night and night into day, and inverts every stated hour of every office in life. Among other circumstances, such as displacing the meals and times of bathing, he mentions that regularly about the third hour of the night the neighbours of one who indulges this false refinement hear the noise of whips and lashes, and upon inquiry find that he is then taking an account of the conduct of his servants and giving them due correction and discipline. This is not remarked as an instance of cruelty, but only of disorder, which, even in actions the most usual and methodical, changes the fixed hours that an established custom had assigned them.[43]

But our present business is only to consider the influence of slavery on the populousness of a state. It is pretended that in this particular the ancient practice had infinitely the advantage, and was the chief cause of that extreme populousness which is supposed in those times. At present all masters discourage the marrying of their male servants, and admit not by any means the marriage of the female, who are then supposed altogether incapacitated for their service; but where the property of the servants is lodged in the master, their marriage and fertility form his riches, and bring him a succession of slaves that supply the place of those whom age and infirmity have disabled. He encourages, therefore, their propagation as much as that of his cattle, rears the young with the same care, and educates them to some art or calling, which may render them more useful or valuable to him. The opulent are, by this policy, interested in the being at least, though not the well-being of the poor; and enrich themselves by increasing the number and industry of those who are subjected to them. Each man, being a sovereign in his own family, has the same interest with regard to it as the prince with regard to the state; and has not, like the prince, any opposite motive of ambition or vainglory which may lead him to depopulate his little sovereignty. All of it is, at all times, under his eye, and he has leisure to inspect the most minute detail of the marriage and education of his subjects.[44]

Such are the consequences of domestic slavery, according to the first aspect and appearance of things; but if we enter more deeply into the subject, we shall perhaps find reason to retract our hasty determinations. The comparison is shocking between the management of human creatures and that of cattle; but being extremely just when applied to the present subject, it may be proper to trace the consequences of it. At the capital, near all great cities, in all populous, rich, industrious provinces, few cattle are bred. Provisions, lodging, attendance, labour are there dear, and men find better their account in buying the cattle, after they come to a certain age, from the remoter and cheaper countries. These are consequently the only breeding countries for cattle; and by a parity of reason, for men too, when the latter are put on the same footing with the former. To rear a child in London till he could be serviceable would cost much dearer than to buy one of the same age from Scotland or Ireland, where he had been raised in a cottage, covered with rags, and fed on oatmeal or potatoes. Those who had slaves, therefore, in all the richer or more populous countries would discourage the pregnancy of the females, and either prevent or destroy the birth. The human species would perish in those places where it ought to increase the fastest, and a perpetual recruit be needed from all the poorer and more desert provinces. Such a continued drain would tend mightily to depopulate the state, and render great cities ten times more destructive than with us, where every man is master of himself, and provides for his children from the powerful instinct of nature—not the calculations of sordid interest. If London at present, without increasing, needs a yearly recruit from the country of 5000 people, as is commonly computed, what must it require if the greatest part of the tradesmen and common people were slaves, and were hindered from breeding by their avaricious masters?

All ancient authors tell us that there was a perpetual flux of slaves to Italy from the remoter provinces, particularly Syria, Cilicia,[45] Cappadocia, and the Lesser Asia, Thrace, and Egypt; yet the number of people did not increase in Italy, and writers complain of the continual decay of industry and agriculture. Where then is that extreme fertility of the Roman slaves which is commonly supposed? So far from multiplying, they could not, it seems, so much as keep up the stock without immense recruits. And though great numbers were continually manumitted and converted into Roman citizens, the numbers even of these did not increase till the freedom of the city was communicated to foreign provinces.

The term for a slave born and bred in the family was _verna_;[46] and these slaves seem to have been entitled by custom to privileges and indulgences beyond others—a sufficient reason why the masters would not be fond of rearing many of that kind.[47] Whoever is acquainted with the maxims of our planters will acknowledge the justness of this observation.[48]

Atticus is much praised by his historian for the care which he took in recruiting his family from the slaves born in it.[49] May we not thence infer that that practice was not then very common?

The names of slaves in the Greek comedies—Syrus, Mysus, Geta, Thrax, Davus, Lydus, Phyrx, etc., afford a presumption that at Athens, at least, most of the slaves were imported from foreign nations. The Athenians, says Strabo, gave to their slaves either the names of the nations whence they were bought, as Lydus, Syrus; or the names that were most common among those nations, as Manes or Midas to a Phrygian, Tibias to a Paphlagonian.

Demosthenes, after having mentioned a law which forbid any man to strike the slave of another, praises the humanity of this law, and adds that if the barbarians from whom slaves were bought had information that their countrymen met with such gentle treatment, they would entertain a great esteem for the Athenians. Isocrates, too, insinuates that the slaves of the Greeks were generally or very commonly barbarians. Aristotle, in his _Politics_, plainly supposes that a slave is always a foreigner. The ancient comic writers represented the slaves as speaking a barbarous language. This was an imitation of nature.

It is well known that Demosthenes, in his nonage, had been defrauded of a large fortune by his tutors, and that afterwards he recovered, by a prosecution of law, the value of his patrimony. His orations on that occasion still remain, and contain a very exact detail of the whole substance left by his father, in money, merchandise, houses, and slaves, together with the value of each particular. Among the rest were 52 slaves, handicraftsmen—viz., 32 sword-cutlers and 20 cabinet-makers,[50] all males; not a word of any wives, children, or family, which they certainly would have had had it been a common custom at Athens to breed from the slaves; and the value of the whole must have depended very much on that circumstance. No female slaves are even so much as mentioned, except some housemaids who belonged to his mother. This argument has great force, if it be not altogether decisive.

Consider this passage of Plutarch, speaking of the elder Cato:—“He had a great number of slaves, whom he took care to buy at the sales of prisoners of war; and he chose them young, that they might easily be accustomed to any diet or manner of life, and be instructed in any business or labour, as men teach anything to young dogs or horses. And esteeming love the chief source of all disorders, he allowed the male slaves to have a commerce with the female in his family, upon paying a certain sum for this privilege; but he strictly forbade all intrigues out of his family.” Are there any symptoms in this narration of that care which is supposed in the ancients, of the marriage and propagation of their slaves? If that was a common practice, founded on general interest, it would surely have been embraced by Cato, who was a great economist, and lived in times when the ancient frugality and simplicity of manners were still in credit and reputation.

It is expressly remarked by the writers of the Roman law that scarce any ever purchase slaves with a view of breeding from them.[51]

Our lackeys and housemaids, I own, do not serve much to multiply their species; but the ancients, besides those who attended on their person, had all their labour performed by slaves, who lived, many of them, in their family; and some great men possessed to the number of 10,000. If there be any suspicion, therefore, that this institution was unfavourable to propagation (and the same reason, at least in part, holds with regard to ancient slaves as well as modern servants), how destructive must slavery have proved!

History mentions a Roman nobleman who had 400 slaves under the same roof with him; and having been assassinated at home by the furious revenge of one of them, the law was executed with rigour, and all without exception were put to death. Many other Roman noblemen had families equally, or more numerous, and I believe every one will allow that this would scarcely be practicable were we to suppose all the slaves married and the females to be breeders.[52]

So early as the poet Hesiod married slaves, whether male or female, were esteemed very inconvenient. How much more where families had increased to such an enormous size, as in Rome, and where simplicity of manners was banished from all ranks of people?

Xenophon in his _Economics_, where he gives directions for the management of a farm, recommends a strict care and attention of laying the male and the female slaves at a distance from each other. He seems not to suppose that they are ever married. The only slaves among the Greeks that appear to have continued their own breed were the Helotes, who had houses apart, and were more the slaves of the public than of individuals.

The same author tells us that Nicias’s overseer, by an agreement with his master, was obliged to pay him an obolus a day for each slave, besides maintaining them and keeping up the number. Had the ancient slaves been all breeders, this last circumstance of the contract had been superfluous.

The ancients talk so frequently of a fixed, stated portion of provisions assigned to each slave, that we are naturally led to conclude that slaves lived almost all single, and received that portion as a kind of board-wages.

The practice, indeed, of marrying the slaves seems not to have been very common even among the country-labourers, where it is more naturally to be expected. Cato, enumerating the slaves requisite to labour a vineyard of a hundred acres, makes them to amount to fifteen—the overseer and his wife (_villicus_ and _villica_) and thirteen male slaves; for an olive plantation of 240 acres, the overseer and his wife and eleven male slaves; and so in proportion to a greater or less plantation or vineyard.

Varro, citing this passage of Cato, allows his computation to be just in every respect except the last. “For as it is requisite,” says he, “to have an overseer and his wife, whether the vineyard or plantation be great or small, this must alter the exactness of the proportion.” Had Cato’s computation been erroneous in any other respect it had certainly been corrected by Varro, who seems fond of discovering so trivial an inaccuracy.

The same author, as well as Columella, recommends it as requisite to give a wife to the overseer in order to attach him the more strongly to his master’s service. This was therefore a peculiar indulgence granted to a slave in whom so great a confidence was reposed.

In the same place Varro mentions it as a useful precaution not to buy too many slaves from the same nations, lest they beget factions and seditions in the family; a presumption that in Italy the greatest part, even of the country-labouring slaves—for he speaks of no other—were bought from the remoter provinces. All the world knows that the family-slaves in Rome, who were instruments of show and luxury, were commonly imported from the east. “Hoc profecere,” says Pliny, speaking of the jealous care of masters, “mancipiorum legiones, et in domo turba externa ac servorum quoque causa nomenclator adhibendus.”

It is indeed recommended by Varro to propagate young shepherds in the 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.”