116 Checks to Population among the ancient Bk. i. 



of the society to divide; but by no means that 

 they were not straitened for room and food at 

 home. 



The other reason, which Mallet gives, is that in 

 Saxony, as well as Scandinavia, vast tracts of land 

 lay in their original uncultivated state, having 

 never been grubbed up or cleared ; and that, from 

 the descriptions of Denmark in those times, it ap- 

 peared that the coasts alone were peopled, but 

 the interior parts formed one vast forest.* Tt is 

 evident that he here falls into the common error 

 of confounding a superfluity of inhabitants with 

 great actual population. The pastoral manners 

 of the people and their habits of war and enter- 

 prise prevented them from clearing and cultivating 

 their lands;']' and then these very forests, by re- 

 straining the sources of subsistence within very 

 narrow bounds, contributed to superfluity of num- 

 bers; that is, to a population beyond what the 

 scanty supplies of the country could support. 



There is another cause not often attended to, 

 why poor, cold and thinly-peopled countries, tend 

 generally to a superfluity of inhabitants, and are 

 strongly prompted to emigration. In warmer and 



* Hist. Dan. torn. i. c. ix. p. 207. 



f Nee arare terrain aut expectare annum tani facile persuaseris, 

 quam vocare hostes et vulnera mereri ; pigrum quinimo et irters vi- 

 detur sudore acquirere quod possis sanguine parare- Tacitus de 

 Mor. Germ. Nothing, indeed, in the history of mankind, is more 

 evident than the extreme difficulty with which habits are changed ; 

 and no argument therefore can be more fallacious than to infer 

 that those people are not pinched with want, who do not make a 

 proper use of their lands. 



