Families of Nations. 48* 



thaf one human pair was fufficient for the population of our globe in a 

 period of no confiderable length, (on the very moderate fappofition of 

 lawyers and political arithmeticians., that every pair of anceftors left on an 

 average two children, and each of them- two more) is evident from the rapid 

 increafe of numbers in geometrical progreffion, fo well known to thofe, 

 who have ever taken the trouble to fum a feries of as many terms, as they 

 fuppofe generations of men in two or three thoufand years'. It follows, 

 that the author of nature (for all nature proclaims its divine author) created 

 but one pair of our fpecies ; yet, had it not been (among other reafons) 

 for the devaluations, which hiitory has recorded, of water and fire, wars, 

 famine, and peftilence, this earth would not now have had' room for its 

 multiplied inhabitants. If the human race then be, as we may confident- 

 ly aflume, of one natural fpecies, they muft all have proceeded from one 

 pair; and if perfect juifice be, as it is moil indubitably, an effential attri- 

 bute of GOD, that pair muft have been gifted with fufficient wifdom and 

 flrength " to be virtuous* and, as far as their nature admitted, happy, but 

 intruded with freedom of will to be vicious and- con fequently degraded : 

 whatever-might be their option, they muft people in time the region where 

 they fir-ft were eftablifhed, and their numerous descendants muft neceffarily 

 feek new countries^ as inclination might prompt, or- accident lead,- them ; 

 they would of courfe migrate in feparate families and dans, which, 

 forgetting by degrees the language of their common progenitor, would 

 form new dialects to convey new ideas, both fimple and complex ; natural 

 affection would unite them at firft, and a fenfe of reciprocal utility, the 

 great and only cement of focial union in the ab fence of public honour and 

 juftice, for which in evil times it is a general fubftitute, would combine 

 them at lergih in communities more or lefs regular ; laws would be pro- 

 pofed by a part of each community, but eijacled by the whole; and go- 



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