Part 20

“‘Hybernum fracta glacie descendet in amnem, Ter matutino Tyberi mergetur.’

“He speaks of that river’s freezing as a common event. Many passages of Horace suppose the streets of Rome full of snow and ice. We should have more certainty with regard to this point had the ancients known the use of thermometers; but their writers, without intending it, give us information sufficient to convince us that the winters are now much more temperate at Rome than formerly. At present the Tiber no more freezes at Rome than the Nile at Cairo. The Romans esteem the winter very rigorous if the snow lies two days, and if one sees for eight-and-forty hours a few icicles hang from a fountain that has a north exposition.”

The observation of this ingenious critic may be extended to other European climates. Who could discover the mild climate of France in Diodorus Siculus’s description of that of Gaul? “As it is a northern climate,” says he, “it is infested with cold to an extreme degree. In cloudy weather, instead of rain, there fall great snows, and in clear weather it there freezes so excessive hard that the rivers acquire bridges of their own substance, over which not only single travellers may pass, but large armies, accompanied with all their baggage and loaded waggons. And there being many rivers in Gaul—the Rhone, the Rhine, etc.—almost all of them are frozen over, and it is usual, in order to prevent falling, to cover the ice with chaff and straw at the places where the road passes.” “Colder than a Gallic winter” is used by Petronius as a proverbial expression.

“North of the Cevennes,” says Strabo, “Gaul produces not figs and olives, and the vines which have been planted bear not grapes that will ripen.”

Ovid positively maintains, with all the serious affirmation of prose, that the Euxine Sea was frozen over every winter in his time, and he appeals to Roman governors, whom he names, for the truth of his assertion. This seldom or never happens at present in the latitude of Tomi, whither Ovid was banished. All the complaints of the same poet seem to mark a rigour of the seasons which is scarce experienced at present in Petersburg or Stockholm.

Tournefort, a Provençal, who had travelled into the same countries, observes that there is not a finer climate in the world; and he asserts that nothing but Ovid’s melancholy could have given him such dismal ideas of it.

But the facts mentioned by that poet are too circumstantial to bear any such interpretation.

Polybius says that the climate in Arcadia was very cold, and the air moist.

“Italy,” says Varro, “is the most temperate climate in Europe. The inland parts” (Gaul, Germany, and Pannonia, no doubt) “have almost perpetual winter.”

The northern parts of Spain, according to Strabo, are but ill inhabited because of the great cold.

Allowing, therefore, this remark to be just, that Europe is become warmer than formerly, how can we account for it? Plainly by no other method than by supposing that the land is at present much better cultivated, and that the woods are cleared which formerly threw a shade upon the earth and kept the rays of the sun from penetrating to it. Our northern colonies in America become more temperate in proportion as the woods are felled,​ but in general, every one may remark that cold still makes itself more severely felt both in North and South America, than in places under the same latitude in Europe.

Saserna, quoted by Columella, affirmed that the disposition of the heavens was altered before his time, and that the air had become much milder and warmer. “As appears hence,” says he, “that many places now abound with vineyards and olive plantations which formerly, by reason of the rigour of the climate, could raise none of these productions.” Such a change, if real, will be allowed an evident sign of the better cultivation and peopling of countries before the age of Saserna;​ and if it be continued to the present times, is a proof that these advantages have been continually increasing throughout this part of the world.

Let us now cast our eye over all the countries which were the scene of ancient and modern history, and compare their past and present situation. We shall not, perhaps, find such foundation for the complaint of the present emptiness and depopulation of the world. Egypt is represented by Maillet, to whom we owe the best account of it, as extremely populous, though he esteems the number of its inhabitants to be diminished. Syria, and the Lesser Asia, as well as the coast of Barbary, I can really own to be very desert in comparison of their ancient condition. The depopulation of Greece is also very obvious. But whether the country now called Turkey in Europe may not, in general, contain as many inhabitants as during the flourishing period of Greece may be a little doubtful. The Thracians seem then to have lived like the Tartars at present, by pillage and plunder; the Getes were still more uncivilized, and the Illyrians were no better. These occupy nine-tenths of that country, and though the government of the Turks be not very favourable to industry and propagation, yet it preserves at least peace and order among the inhabitants, and is preferable to that barbarous, unsettled condition in which they anciently lived.

Poland and Muscovy in Europe are not populous, but are certainly much more so than the ancient Sarmatia and Scythia, where no husbandry or tillage was ever heard of, and pasturage was the sole art by which the people were maintained. The like observation may be extended to Denmark and Sweden. No one ought to esteem the immense swarms of people which formerly came from the North, and overran all Europe, to be any objection to this opinion. Where a whole nation, or even half of it, remove their seat, it is easy to imagine what a prodigious multitude they must form, with what desperate valour they must make their attacks, and how the terror they strike into the invaded nations will make these magnify, in their imagination, both the courage and multitude of the invaders. Scotland is neither extensive nor populous, but were the half of its inhabitants to seek new seats they would form a colony as large as the Teutons and Cimbri, and would shake all Europe, supposing it in no better condition for defence than formerly.

Germany has surely at present twenty times more inhabitants than in ancient times, when they cultivated no ground, and each tribe valued itself on the extensive desolation which it spread around, as we learn from Cæsar, and Tacitus, and Strabo. A proof that the division into small republics will not alone render a nation populous, unless attended with the spirit of peace, order, and industry.

The barbarous condition of Britain in former times is well known, and the thinness of its inhabitants may easily be conjectured, both from their barbarity and from a circumstance mentioned by Herodian, that all Britain was marshy, even in Severus’s time, after the Romans had been fully settled in it above a whole century.

It is not easily imagined that the Gauls were anciently much more advanced in the arts of life than their northern neighbours, since they travelled to this island for their education in the mysteries of the religion and philosophy of the Druids.​ I cannot therefore think that Gaul was then near so populous as France is at present.

Were we to believe, indeed, and join together the testimony of Appian and that of Diodorus Siculus, we must admit an incredible populousness in Gaul. The former historian says that there were 400 nations in that country; the latter affirms that the largest of the Gallic nations consisted of 200,000 men, besides women and children, and the least of 50,000. Calculating therefore at a medium, we must admit of near 200,000,000 of people in a country which we esteem populous at present, though supposed to contain little more than twenty.​ Such calculations therefore by their extravagance lose all manner of authority. We may observe that that equality of property, to which the populousness of antiquity may be ascribed, had no place among the Gauls. Their intestine wars also, before Cæsar’s time, were almost perpetual. And Strabo observes that though all Gaul was cultivated, yet it was not cultivated with any skill or care, the genius of the inhabitants leading them less to arts than arms, till their slavery to Rome produced peace among themselves.

Cæsar enumerates very particularly the great forces which were levied at Belgium to oppose his conquests, and makes them amount to 208,000. These were not the whole people able to bear arms in Belgium; for the same historian tells us that the Bellovaci could have brought a hundred thousand men into the field, though they engaged only for sixty. Taking the whole, therefore, in this proportion of ten to six, the sum of fighting men in all the states of Belgium was about 350,000; all the inhabitants a million and a half. And Belgium being about the fourth of Gaul, that country might contain six millions, which is not the third of its present inhabitants.​ We are informed by Cæsar that the Gauls had no fixed property in land; but that the chieftains, when any death happened in a family, made a new division of all the lands among the several members of the family. This is the custom of Tanistry, which so long prevailed in Ireland, and which retained that country in a state of misery, barbarism, and desolation.

The ancient Helvetia was 250 miles in length and 180 in breadth, according to the same author, yet contained only 360,000 inhabitants. The Canton of Berne alone has at present as many people.

After this computation of Appian and Diodorus Siculus, I know not whether I dare affirm that the modern Dutch are more numerous than the ancient Batavi.

Spain is decayed from what it was three centuries ago; but if we step backward two thousand years and consider the restless, turbulent, unsettled condition of its inhabitants, we may probably be inclined to think that it is now much more populous. Many Spaniards killed themselves when deprived of their arms by the Romans. It appears from Plutarch that robbery and plunder were esteemed honourable among the Spaniards. Hirtius represents in the same light the situation of that country in Cæsar’s time, and he says that every man was obliged to live in castles and walled towns for his security. It was not till its final conquest under Augustus that these disorders were repressed. The account which Strabo and Justin give of Spain corresponds exactly with those above mentioned. How much therefore must it diminish from our idea of the populousness of antiquity when we find that Cicero, comparing Italy, Africa, Gaul, Greece, and Spain, mentions the great number of inhabitants as the peculiar circumstance which rendered this latter country formidable.​

Italy, it is probable however, has decayed; but how many great cities does it still contain? Venice, Genoa, Pavia, Turin, Milan, Naples, Florence, Leghorn, which either subsisted not in ancient times, or were then very inconsiderable. If we reflect on this, we shall not be apt to carry matters to so great an extreme as is usual with regard to this subject.

When the Roman authors complain that Italy, which formerly exported corn, became dependent on all the provinces for its daily bread, they never ascribe this alteration to the increase of its inhabitants, but to the neglect of tillage and agriculture. A natural effect of that pernicious practice of importing corn in order to distribute it gratis among the Roman citizens, and a very bad means of multiplying the inhabitants of any country.​ The sportula, so much talked of by Martial and Juvenal, being presents regularly made by the great lords to their smaller clients, must have had a like tendency to produce idleness, debauchery, and a continual decay among the people. The parish-rates have at present the same bad consequences in England.

Were I to assign a period when I imagine this part of the world might possibly contain more inhabitants than at present, I should pitch upon the age of Trajan and the Antonines, the great extent of the Roman Empire being then civilized and cultivated, settled almost in a profound peace both foreign and domestic, and living under the same regular police and government.​ But we are told that all extensive governments, especially absolute monarchies, are destructive to population, and contain a secret vice and poison, which destroy the effect of all these promising appearances. To confirm this, there is a passage cited from Plutarch, which being somewhat singular, we shall here examine it.

That author, endeavouring to account for the silence of many of the oracles, says that it may be ascribed to the present desolation of the world, proceeding from former wars and factions, which common calamity, he adds, has fallen heavier upon Greece than on any other country; insomuch that the whole could scarce at present furnish three thousand warriors, a number which, in the time of the Median War, were supplied by the single city of Megara. The gods, therefore, who affect works of dignity and importance, have suppressed many of their oracles, and deign not to use so many interpreters of their will to so diminutive a people.

I must confess that this passage contains so many difficulties that I know not what to make of it. You may observe that Plutarch assigns for a cause of the decay of mankind not the extensive dominion of the Romans, but the former wars and factions of the several nations, all which were quieted by the Roman arms. Plutarch’s reasoning, therefore, is directly contrary to the inference which is drawn from the fact he advances.

Polybius supposes that Greece had become more prosperous and flourishing after the establishment of the Roman yoke;​ and though that historian wrote before these conquerors had degenerated from being the patrons to be the plunderers of mankind, yet as we find from Tacitus that the severity of the emperors afterwards checked the licence of the governors, we have no reason to think that extensive monarchy so destructive as it is so often represented.