in China and Japan.

the country. The rest of the people would certainly be precisely in the same state as they were before, neither better or worse in years of average plenty; but in a time of dearth the produce of this land would be returned to them, without the mouths to help them to eat it. China, without her distilleries, would certainly be more populous, but on a failure of the seasons would have still less resource than she has at present, and as far as the magnitude of the cause would operate, would in consequence be more subject to famines, and those famines would be more severe.

The state of Japan resembles in so many respects that of China, that a particular consideration of it would lead into too many repetitions. Montesquieu attributes its populousness to the birth of a greater number of females; but the principal cause of this populousness is, without doubt, as in China, the persevering industry of the natives, directed, as it has always been, principally to agriculture.

In reading the preface to Thunberg's account

1 Liv. xxiii. c. xii. It is surprising that Montesquieu who appears sometimes to understand the subject of population, should at other times make such observations as this.

Of the checks to population, &c.

of Japan, it would seem extremely difficult to trace the checks to the population of a country, the inhabitants of which are said to live in such happiness and plenty: but the continuation of his own work contradicts the impression of his preface; and in the valuable history of Japan by Kæmpfer these checks are sufficiently obvious. In the extracts from two historical chronicles published in Japan, which he produces, a very curious account is given of the different mortalities, plagues, famines, bloody wars, and other causes of destruction which have occurred since the commencement of these records. The Japanese are distinguished from the Chinese, in being much more warlike, seditious, dissolute, and ambitious; and it would appear, from Kampfer's account, that the check to population from infanticide, in China, is balanced by the greater dissoluteness of manners with regard to the sex, and the greater frequency of wars and intestine commotions, which prevail in Japan. With regard to the positive checks to population from disease and famine, the two countries seem to be nearly on a level.

1 Book ii.

CHAPTER XIII.

Of the Checks to Population among the Greeks.

IT has been generally allowed, and will not indeed admit of a doubt, that the more equal division of property among the Greeks and Romans, in the early period of their history, and the direction of their industry principally to agriculture, must have tended greatly to encourage population. Agriculture is not only, as Hume states, that species of industry, which is chiefly requisite to the subsistence of multitudes, but it is in fact the sole species by which multitudes can exist; and all the numerous arts and manufactures of the modern world, by which such numbers appear to be supported, have no tendency whatever to increase population, except as far as they tend to increase the quantity, and to facilitate the distribution of the products of agriculture.

In countries where from the operation of particular causes, property in land is divided into very large shares, these arts and manufactures are ab

'Essay xi. p. 467. 4to edit.

Of the checks to population

solutely necessary to the existence of any considerable population. Without them modern Europe would be unpeopled. But where property is divided into small shares, the same necessity for them does not appear. 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 greatest 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

among the Greeks.

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 brought the subject immediately home to every thinking person, could not fail to point out to the legislators and philosophers of those times the strong tendency of population to increase beyond the means of subsistence; and they did not, like the statesmen and projectors of modern days, overlook the consideration of a question which so deeply affects the happiness and tranquillity of society. However we may justly execrate the barbarous expedients which they adopted to remove the dif ficulty, we cannot but give them some credit for their penetration in seeing it; and in being fully aware, that, if not considered and obviated, it would be sufficient of itself to destroy their best planned schemes of republican equality and happiness.

The power of colonization is necessarily li