Among the other inconveniences which the Athenians felt from the fortifying Decelia by the Lacedemonians, it is represented by Thucydides as one of the most considerable that they could not bring over their corn from Eubea by land, passing by Oropus; but were obliged to embark it and to sail about the promontory of Sunium—a surprising instance of the imperfection of ancient navigation, for the water-carriage is not here above double the land.
I do not remember any passage in any ancient author where the growth of any city is ascribed to the establishment of a manufacture. The commerce which is said to flourish is chiefly the exchange of those commodities for which different soils and climates were suited. The sale of wine and oil into Africa, according to Diodorus Siculus, was the foundation of the riches of Agrigentum. The situation of the city of Sybaris, according to the same author, was the cause of its immense populousness, being built near the two rivers, Crathys and Sybaris. But these two rivers, we may observe, are not navigable, and could only produce some fertile valleys for agriculture and husbandry—an advantage so inconsiderable that a modern writer would scarcely have taken notice of it.
The barbarity of the ancient tyrants, together with the extreme love of liberty which animated those ages, must have banished every merchant and manufacturer, and have quite depopulated the state, had it subsisted upon industry and commerce. While the cruel and suspicious Dionysius was carrying on his butcheries, who that was not detained by his landed property, and could have carried with him any art or skill to procure a subsistence in other countries, would have remained exposed to such implacable barbarity? The persecutions of Philip II. and Louis XIV. filled all Europe with the manufacturers of Flanders and of France.
I grant that agriculture is the species of industry which is chiefly requisite to the subsistence of multitudes, and it is possible that this industry may flourish even where {p141} manufactures and other arts are unknown and neglected. Switzerland is at present a very remarkable instance, where we find at once the most skilful husbandmen and the most bungling tradesmen that are to be met with in all Europe. That agriculture flourished in Greece and Italy, at least in some parts of them, and at some periods, we have reason to presume; and whether the mechanical arts had reached the same degree of perfection may not be esteemed so material, especially if we consider the great equality in the ancient republics, where each family was obliged to cultivate with the greatest care and industry its own little field in order to its subsistence.
But is it just reasoning, because agriculture may in some instances flourish without trade or manufactures, to conclude that, in any great extent of country and for any great tract of time, it would subsist alone? The most natural way surely of encouraging husbandry is first to excite other kinds of industry, and thereby afford the labourer a ready market for his commodities and a return of such goods as may contribute to his pleasure and enjoyment. This method is infallible and universal, and as it prevails more in modern government than in the ancient, it affords a presumption of the superior populousness of the former.
Every man, says Xenophon, may be a farmer; no art or skill is requisite: all consists in the industry and attention to the execution. A strong proof, as Columella hints, that agriculture was but little known in the age of Xenophon.
All our later improvements and refinements, have they operated nothing towards the easy subsistence of men, and consequently towards their propagation and increase? Our superior skill in mechanics, the discovery of new worlds, by which commerce has been so much enlarged, the establishment of posts, and the use of bills of exchange: these seem all extremely useful to the encouragement of art, industry, and populousness. Were we to strike off these, what a check should we give to every kind of business and labour, and what multitudes of families would immediately perish from want and hunger! And it seems not probable {p142} that we could supply the place of these new inventions by any other regulation or institution.
Have we reason to think that the police of ancient states was any wise comparable to that of modern, or that men had then equal security either at home or in their journeys by land or water? I question not but every impartial examiner would give us the preference in this particular.
Thus, upon comparing the whole, it seems impossible to assign any just reason why the world should have been more populous in ancient than in modern times. The equality of property among the ancients, liberty, and the small divisions of their states, were indeed favourable to the propagation of mankind; but their wars were more bloody and destructive, their governments more factious and unsettled, commerce and manufactures more feeble and languishing, and the general police more loose and irregular. These latter disadvantages seem to form a sufficient counterbalance to the former advantages, and rather favour the opposite opinion to that which commonly prevails with regard to this subject.
But there is no reasoning, it may be said, against matter of fact. If it appear that the world was then more populous than at present, we may be assured that our conjectures are false, and that we have overlooked some material circumstance in the comparison. This I readily own: all our preceding reasonings I acknowledge to be mere trifling, or, at least, small skirmishes and frivolous rencounters which decide nothing. But unluckily the main combat, where we compare facts, cannot be rendered much more decisive. The facts delivered by ancient authors are either so uncertain or so imperfect as to afford us nothing positive in this matter. How indeed could it be otherwise? The very facts which we must oppose to them in computing the greatness of modern states are far from being either certain or complete. Many grounds of calculation proceeded on by celebrated writers are little better than those of the Emperor Heliogabalus, who formed an estimate of the immense greatness of Rome from ten thousand pound weight of cobwebs which had been found in that city. {p143}