Rome, on the contrary, would be a desert without cardinals, ambassadors, and travellers. It would be only an illustrious monument, like the temple of Jupiter Ammon. In the time of the first Cæsar, it was computed that this sterile territory, rendered fertile by manure and the labor of slaves, contained some millions of men. It was an exception to the general law, that population is ordinarily in proportion to fertility of soil.
Conquest rendered this barren country fertile and populous. A form of government as strange and contradictory as any which ever astonished mankind, has restored to the territory of Romulus its primitive character. The whole country is depopulated from Orvieto to Terracina. Rome, reduced to its own citizens, would be to London only as one to twelve; and in respect to money and commerce, would be to the towns of Amsterdam and London as one to a thousand.
That which Rome has lost, Europe has not only regained, but the population has almost tripled since the days of Charlemagne. I say tripled, which is much; for propagation is not in geometrical progression. All the calculations made on the idea of this pretended multiplication, amount only to absurd chimeras.
If a family of human beings or of apes multiplied in this manner, at the end of two hundred years the earth would not be able to contain them. Nature has taken care at once to preserve and restrain the various species. She resembles the fates, who spin and cut threads continually. She is occupied with birth and destruction alone.
If she has given to man more ideas and memory than to other animals; if she has rendered him capable of generalizing his ideas and combining them; if he has the advantage of the gift of speech, she has not bestowed on him that of multiplication equal to insects. There are more ants in a square league of heath, than of men in the world, counting all that have ever existed.
When a country possesses a great number of idlers, be sure that it is well peopled; since these idlers are lodged, clothed, fed, amused, and respected by those who labor. The principal object, however, is not to possess a superfluity of men, but to render such as we have as little unhappy as possible.
Let us thank nature for placing us in the temperate zone, peopled almost throughout by a more than sufficient number of inhabitants, who cultivate all the arts; and let us endeavor not to lessen this advantage by our absurdities.
SECTION III.
It must be confessed, that we ordinarily people and depopulate the world a little at random; and everybody acts in this manner. We are little adapted to obtain an accurate notion of things; the nearly is our only guide, and it often leads us astray.
It is still worse when we wish to calculate precisely. We go and see farces and laugh at them; but should we laugh less in our closets when we read grave authors deciding exactly how many men existed on the earth two hundred and eighty-five years after the general deluge. We find, according to Father Petau, that the family of Noah had produced one thousand two hundred and twenty-four millions seven hundred and seventeen thousand inhabitants, in three hundred years. The good priest Petau evidently knew little about getting children and rearing them, if we are to judge by this statement.