232 Of the Checks to Population Bk. i. 



cessity for them does not exist. The division 

 itself attains immediately one great object, that 

 of distribution ; and if the demand for men be 

 constant, to fight the battles and support the 

 power and dignity of the state, we may easily 

 conceive that this motive, joined to the natural 

 love of a family, might be sufficient to induce 

 each proprietor to cultivate his land to the 

 utmost, in order that it might support the great- 

 est number of descendants. 



The division of people into small states, during 

 the early periods of Greek and Roman history, 

 gave additional force to this motive. Where the 

 number of free citizens did not perhaps exceed 

 ten or twenty thousand, each individual would 

 naturally feel the value of his own exertions ; and 

 knowing that the state to which he belonged, 

 situated in the midst of envious and watchful 

 rivals, must depend chiefly on its population for 

 its means of defence and safety, would be sensible 

 that, in suffering the lands which were allotted 

 to him to lie idle, he would be deficient in his 

 duty as a citizen. These causes appear to have 

 produced a considerable attention to agriculture, 

 without the intervention of the artificial wants of 

 mankind to encourage it. Population followed 

 the products of the earth with more than equal 

 pace ; and when the overflowing numbers were 

 not taken off by the drains of war or disease, they 

 found vent in frequent and repeated colonization. 

 The necessity of these frequent colonizations, 

 joined to the smallness of the states, which 



