112 Checks to Population among the ancient Bk. i. 



was drained of people, and could no longer fur- 

 nish instruments of destruction,* he will appear 

 to have fallen into the very error which he had 

 before laboured to refute, and to speak as if the 

 northern nations were actually very populous. 

 For they must have been so, if the number of 

 their inhabitants at any one period had been suf- 

 ficient, notwithstanding the slaughter of war, to 

 people in such a manner Thrace, Pannonia, Gaul, 

 Spain, Africa, Italy and England, as in some 

 parts not to leave many traces of their former 

 inhabitants. The period of the peopling of these 

 countries, however, he himself mentions as two 

 hundred years ;f and in such a time new genera- 

 tions would arise that would more than supply 

 every vacancy. 



The true cause which put a stop to the con- 

 tinuance of northern emigration, was the impos- 

 sibility any longer of making an impression on 

 the most desirable countries of Europe. They 

 were then inhabited by the descendants of the 

 bravest and most enterprising of the German 

 tribes; and it was not probable that they should 

 so soon degenerate from the valour of their an- 

 cestors, as to suffer their lands to be wrested 

 from them by inferior numbers and inferior skill, 

 though perhaps superior hardihood. 



Checked for a time by the bravery and poverty 

 of their neighbours by land, the enterprising spirit 

 and overflowing numbers of the Scandinavian na- 



* Robertson's Charles V. vol. i. s. i. p. 1 1. 

 t Id. p. 7. 



