Chapter CXIV: Section CCLII: Positive Decrease of Population

The way of vice is steep. Where the aversion to the sacrifices and to the limitations of liberty imposed by marriage, has permeated the great body of the people; where, indeed, the immoral tendencies counter to population described in § 249 ff. have been largely developed, they very readily cease to be mere checks, and population may positively decline. While in the case of fresh and vigorous nations, the mere loss of men caused by wars, pestilence, etc., is very easily made up;[252-1] that reproductive power may here be too much enfeebled to fill up the gap again. It has happened more than once that the decline of a period has been frightfully promoted by great plagues, which have swept away in whole masses the remnants of a former and better generation.[252-2] The return of the relatively small population of its childhood to a nation in its senility cannot be ascribed exclusively to a decrease in its means of subsistence and to a less advantageous distribution of them.[252-3] [252-4] The depopulation, however, of Greece and Rome in their decline might be hard to understand were it not for the slavery of the lower class.[252-5]

[Footnote 252-1: It is said that the plague which, in 1709
and 1710, decimated Prussia and Lithuanian, carried away
one-third of the inhabitants, and even one-half of those at
Dantzig. While previously the number of marriages annually
was, on an average, 6,082, it rose in 1711 to 12,028. In
1712 it was 6,267, and sank some years afterwards on account
of the decrease in population, to 5,000. (_Süssmilch_,
Göttl. Ordnung, I, Tab. 21.) Similar effects of the plague at
Marseilles, 1720. (_Messance_, Recherches sur la Population,
766.) In Russia, too, it was observed after the devastation
produced by the black death in 1347 and the succeeding
years, that the population again increased at an
extraordinarily rapid rate; and that an unusual number of
twins and triplets were born (?). (_Karamsin_, Russ. Gesch.,
IV, 230.) Compare _Dalin_ Schwed. Gesch., 11,384;
_Montfaucon_, Monuments de la Monarchie Française, I, 282.]

[Footnote 252-2: I would mention the Athenian pestilence
during the last years or Pericles; the Roman in the _orbis
terrarum_, between 250 and 265 B.C., which is said to have
destroyed one-half of the population of Alexandria.
(_Gibbon_, Hist. of the Roman Empire, ch. 10.) It also made
frightful ravages, intellectually, on the nationality of the
Romans. (_Niebuhr._) Thus, in England, the black death
contributed very largely to cause the disappearance of the
medieval spirit. (_Rogers._) Of great political importance
was the pestilence of Bagdad, which, in 1831, carried off
2/3 of the inhabitants. All national bonds seemed dissolved,
robbers ruled the country; the army of the powerful Doud
Pascha was carried off entirely, and his whole political
system, constructed after the model of that of Mehemet-Ali,
fell into ruin. Compare _Anth. Groves_, Missionary Journal
of a Residence at Bagdad, 1832.]

[Footnote 252-3: Among the Maoris, the number of sterile
women is 9 times as great as the average in Europe. Compare
Reise der Novara, III, 129.]

[Footnote 252-4: The decreasing number of English Quakers,
among whom, in 1680-89, there occurred 2,598 marriages, and
in 1840-49 only 659, finds expression in the unfrequency of
marriage, a comparatively small number of women and a small
number of children, all in conjunction with a small
mortality. (Statist. Journ., 1859, 208 ff.) There is no
reason to have recourse here to vice as a cause, and
scarcely to physiological reasons for an explanation,
because these phenomena are accounted for in great part by
the fact that adult males so frequently leave the sect.]

[Footnote 252-5: In this respect, however, there is a great
difference between bondage and slavery. As early a writer as
_Polybius_ speaks of the depopulation of Greece. (_Polyb._,
II, 55; XXXVII, 4.) He looks for the cause in this, that in
every family, for luxury's sake, either no children whatever
were wanted, or at most from one to two, that the latter
might be left rich. (Exc. Vat., 448.) Very remarkable,
_Seneca_, Cons. ad. Marc, 19. Further, _Cicero_, ad. Div.,
II, 5. _Strabo_, VII, 501; VIII, 595; IX, 617, 629.
_Pausan._, VII, 18; VIII, 7; X, 4; _Dio Chr._, VII, 34, 121;
XXXIII, 25. _Plutarch_ claimed that Hellas could, in his
time, number scarcely 3,000 hoplites, while in the time of
Themistocles, Megalis alone had put as many in the field.
(De Defectu Orac., S.) Antium and Tarentum similarly
declined under Nero. (_Tacit_., Ann., XIV, 27.) The
depopulation even of the capital, which began under
Tiberius, is apparent from _Tacit._, Ann., IV, 4, 27.
National beauty also declined with the nation's
populousness. _Æschines_ saw a great many beautiful youths
in Athens (adv. Timarch., 31); _Cotta_, only very few
(_Cicero_, de Nat. Deorum, I, 28); _Dio Chrysostomus_,
almost none at all (Orat., XXI). On the necessary lowering
of the military standard of measure, see _Theod._, Cod.,
VII, 13, 3, _Verget_, de Re milit., I, 5. The depopulation
of the later _orbis terrarum_ is confirmed by the easiness
of the new division of land with the German conquerors.
Compare _Gaupp_, Die Germanischen Niederlassungen und
Landtheilungen (1845), passim.]