THE MALTHUSIAN THEORY 119 



causes, or from commerce leaving its old seats for 

 new, is the sole depopulating agent that has been 

 known in the history of mankind, unless we except 

 the case of certain savage races destined to die out 

 when the white man comes into their territories, and 

 interferes with their ancestral manner of living. 



Wars, famines, and pestilences have been great 

 scourges and destroyers of human life in the past, 

 but their depopulating effects were temporary, and the 

 gaps made by them in population were rapidly filled 

 up. Misgovernment, oppression by conquering races, 

 tyrannical interference with the rights and security 

 of property and of individual action, whether the 

 result of foreign conquest or of internal maladmini- 

 stration, have been the principal causes of the decline 

 and fall of empires and of the seats of industrial 

 populations. 



Sicily in the best days of the Eoman Republic was 

 a granary of Koine, abounding in great cities flourish- 

 ing by their industries, and filled with every kind of 

 material wealth. The speeches of Cicero against 

 Verres detail the frightful effects of misrule and 

 oppression upon such a land, and show us how a few 

 years of a tyrannical governor plundering gathered 

 wealth and destroying the springs of industry and 

 commerce may dispeople a country and render it, 

 comparatively speaking, a desert. The same orator 

 tells us of similar misgovernment in other parts of the 

 empire followed by similar effects. Greedy pro- 

 consuls and procurators, eager to return to Rome 



