118 Checks to Population among the ancient Bk. i. 



this pure and disinterested love of war and en- 

 terprise, civil dissensions, the pressure of a vic- 

 torious enemy, a wish for a milder climate, or 

 other causes, might sometimes prompt to emigra- 

 tion; but, in a general view of the subject, I can- 

 not help considering this period of history as af- 

 fording a very striking illustration of the principle 

 of population; a principle, which appears to me 

 to have given the original impulse and spring of 

 action, to have furnished the inexhaustible re- 

 sources, and often prepared the immediate causes 

 of that rapid succession of adventurous irruptions 

 and emigrations, which occasioned the fall of the 

 Roman empire; and afterwards, pouring from the 

 thinly-peopled countries of Denmark and Norway 

 for above two hundred years, ravaged and overran 

 a great part of Europe. Without the supposition 

 of a tendency to increase almost as great as in the 

 United States of America, the facts appear to 

 me not to be accounted for;* and with such a sup- 

 position, we cannot be at a loss to name the checks 

 to the actual population, when we read the disgust- 

 ing details of those unceasing wars, and of that 

 prodigal waste of human life, which marked these 

 barbarous periods. 



* Gibbon, Robertson and Mallet seem all ratber to speak of 

 Jornandes's expression vagina nationum as incorrect and exagge- 

 rated ; but to me it appears exactly applicable, tbougb tbe other 

 expression, officina gentium, at least their translation of it, store- 

 house of nations, is not accurate. 



Ex hac igitur Scanzia insula, quasi officina gentium, aut certe 

 velut vagina nationum egressi, &c. Jornandes cle Rebus Geticis, 

 p. 83. 



