Ch. vii. Of the Checks to Population, §c. 121 



south, the Scythian shepherds have been uniformly 

 actuated by a most savage and destructive spirit. 

 When the Moguls had subdued the northern pro- 

 vinces of China, it was proposed, in calm and de- 

 liberate council, to exterminate all the inhabitants 

 of that populous country, that the vacant land 

 might be converted to the pasture of cattle. The 

 execution of this horrid design was prevented by 

 the wisdom and firmness of a Chinese mandarin;* 

 but the bare proposal of it exhibits a striking pic- 

 ture, not only of the inhuman manner in which 

 the rights of conquest were abused, but of the 

 powerful force of habit among nations of shepherds, 

 and the consequent difficulty of the transition 

 from the pastoral to the agricultural state. 



To pursue, even in the most cursory manner, 

 the tide of emigration and conquest in Asia, the 

 rapid increase of some tribes, and the total extinc- 

 tion of others, would lead much too far. During 

 the periods of the formidable irruptions of the Huns, 

 the wide-extended invasions of the Moguls and 

 Tartars, the sanguinary conquests of Attila, Zingis 

 Khan and Tamerlane, and the dreadful convulsions 

 which attended the dissolution as well as the for- 

 mation of their empires, the checks to population 

 are but too obvious. In reading of the devasta- 

 tions of the human race in those times, when the 

 slightest motive of caprice or convenience often in- 

 volved a whole people in indiscriminate massacre, | 



* Gibbon, vol. vi. c. xxxiv. p. 54. 

 t Id. p. 55. 



