*

number of the inhabitants of the world now, together with the maintenance they required, with the same ease that he created a single pair: but how little would such a plan have harmonized with the wisdom discoverable in the wonderful economy of nature; with that prospective contrivance which we now admire in the organization of the universe, as far as our researches can scrutinize? Waving, however, these objections, it cannot be for a moment doubted, that the effect of any law which confined the human race to the spot in which they were born, would be a great deterioration of mankind in point of civilization. None, it may be said, would be in want: but none would be better provided than the meanest now. Necessity, having never existed, would never have led to all those gradual improvements of which it has in every age been the parent, and by which it has raised, as was largely shown, the character and situation of man.

* Wallace on the Numbers of Mankind,

p. 10.

It is evident, that a constant communication of the inhabitants of different parts of the globe, transfers the arts and improvements which each have attained, with a degree of celerity to which their gradual discovery bears no sort of proportion. This communication is preserved by the ordinance of multiplication; by which the world was originally stocked with inhabitants, and by which it is kept almost uniformly full, through the continual migrations from overpeopled countries. These migrators* carry with them the language, the arts, and the improvements of their parent country. If every distinct portion of the globe had been assigned its stock of cultivators, each tribe, thus permanently settled, must have

*This has been the case in all the regular migrations, as in those from Egypt to Asia, from Asia to Greece, from Greece to the different shores of the Mediterranean, and in the later settlements from European countries in unpeopled regions. This is the regular course of things, and must not be confounded with the invasions of the Roman empire, or the subsequent inundations of Europe from Arabia and Tartary, which were expeditions of conquest, not of colonization.

discovered by their own light their own arts, sciences, and inventions. But this perpetual obstacle to improvement is thrown down by the ordinance which has led to the frequent migrations of which history is so full; and the bands or parties separated at various periods from countries overstocked and civilized, have carried civilization with them,. disturbed, perhaps, and checked in its growth by the strong hand of necessity which tore the settlers from their native soil; but often well adapted to a change of climate, and different mode of culture; and striking its roots deeper, and spreading its branches more widely, than if confined to its original spot, or natural country.*

* In Sicily alone, for instance, first some Iberians settled, and gave the name Trinacria; then a band of Trojans, after the destruction of their native city: next a body of Siculi from Italy, gave the appellation which has been ever since retained. Some Phoenicians settled on the coast and in the neighbouring islands. Of the Greeks, the Chalcidians built Egesta, Naxus, Catana, and other cities; the Megareans, Megara, and Selinus; the Rhodians, Gela. Herod. 1. 6, in init. Thuc. 1. 6, s. 2, &c. Must not all these have brought a greater accession of arts, than could have been

Let us consult the only guide we can trust, experience; and look to the countries which have enjoyed least of that intercourse for which nature has established a general provision; to America, for instance, at its discovery, by Columbus; to many parts of Africa and Asia; to China, and the islands of the Pacific. These are the countries to which we resort for examples of a savage state, or of a retrograde, or at best a stationary condition of civilization: and these are likewise examples of people who have long remained fixed in the same spot, with little or no interchange of communication. Some of these countries, when first discovered, had no knowledge at all of any arts, except those absolutely necessary for their preservation: many were totally ignorant of the use of letters; others had recourse to the most insufficient and cumbrous methods of supplying their place. Any cultivation of the mind, moral, religious, or literary, is here to be found in its lowest possible degree.

expected to be indigenous? See also the full account of the Grecian colonies and migrations, Mitford, chap. v. s. 2.

VOL. II.

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Still farther, it appears, that absence of intercourse is able to perpetuate barbarism in the centre of cultivation. Which of the Grecian states has left us no relic of its literature, and was confessedly most behindhand in all the arts of civilized life? We turn at once to the community whose lawgiver prohibited the admission of strangers at home, and the intercourse of his own citizens abroad.* The natives of Sparta never attained any degree of mental improvement, till they left the artificial constitution under which they were born, and were brought into the natural situation of the rest of mankind by colonization.

If we prefer the positive to the negative argument, we may look on the other side for those countries which have advanced quickest and farthest in the road of mental and civil improvement. Opportunity of communication in all ages has facilitated this progress to such a degree, that a gradual scale of civilization

* Plutarch, Vit. Lyc. p. 121.