110 Checks to Population among the ancient Bk. i. 



intercourse, and hence pass the age of puberty 

 unexhausted. Nor are the virgins brought for- 

 ward. The same maturity, the same full growth, is 

 required ; the sexes unite equally matched and 

 robust, and the children inherit the vigour of 

 their parents. The more numerous are a man's 

 kinsmen and relations, the more comfortable is 

 his old age; nor is it any advantage to be child- 

 less."* 



With these manners, and a habit of enterprise 

 and emigration, which would naturally remove 

 all fears about providing for a family, it is diffi- 

 cult to conceive a society with a stronger prin- 

 ciple of increase; and we see at once that pro- 

 lific source of successive armies and colonies, 

 against which the force of the Roman empire so 

 long struggled with difficulty, and under which it 

 ultimately sunk. It is not probable that, for two 

 periods together, or even for one, the population 

 within the confines of Germany ever doubled 

 itself in twenty-five years. Their perpetual 

 wars, the rude state of agriculture, and particu- 

 larly the very strange custom adopted by most 

 of the tribes of marking their barriers by exten- 

 sive deserts,t would prevent any very great 

 actual increase of numbers. At no one period 

 could the country be called well-peopled, though 

 it was often redundant in population. They 

 abandoned their immense forests to the exercise 



* Tacitus ile Moribus Germ. s. xx. 

 f Caesar dc Bell. Gall. vi. 23. 



