96 Checks to Population among the ancient Bk. i. 



to raise a population, which would remain to be 

 repressed afterwards by famine and war. 



The tribes that possessed themselves of the more 

 fruitful regions, though they might win them and 

 maintain them by continual battles, rapidly in- 

 creased in number and power, from the increased 

 means of subsistence; till at length the whole ter- 

 ritory, from the confines of China to the shores of 

 the Baltic, was peopled by a various race of bar- 

 barians, brave, robust, and enterprising, inured to 

 hardships, and delighting in war.* While the dif- 

 ferent fixed governments of Europe and Asia, by 

 superior population and superior skill, were able 

 to oppose an impenetrable barrier to their destroy- 

 ing hordes, they wasted their superfluous num- 

 bers in contests with each other; but the moment 

 that the weakness of the settled governments, or 

 the casual union of many of these wandering 

 tribes, gave them the ascendant in power, the 

 storm discharged itself on the fairest provinces of 

 the earth; and China, Persia, Egypt and Italy 

 were overwhelmed at different periods in this 

 flood of barbarism. 



These remarks are strongly exemplified in the 



* The various branchings, divisions, and contests of the great 

 Tartar nation are curiously described in the Genealogical History 

 of the Tartars by the Khan Abul Ghazi: (translated into English 

 from the French, with additions, in 2 vols. 8vo.) but the misfor- 

 tune of all history is, that while the particular motives of a few 

 princes and leaders, in their various projects of ambition, are some- 

 times detailed with accuracy, the general causes which crowd their 

 standards with willing followers are often entirely overlooked. 



