preserve him through the numberless dangers with which he would
be surrounded from infancy to manhood. The true points of
comparison between two nations seem to be the ranks in each which
appear nearest to answer to each other. And in this view, I
should compare the warriors in the prime of life with the
gentlemen, and the women, children, and aged, with the lower
classes of the community in civilized states.

May we not then fairly infer from this short review, or
rather, from the accounts that may be referred to of nations of
hunters, that their population is thin from the scarcity of food,
that it would immediately increase if food was in greater plenty,
and that, putting vice out of the question among savages, misery
is the check that represses the superior power of population and
keeps its effects equal to the means of subsistence. Actual
observation and experience tell us that this check, with a few
local and temporary exceptions, is constantly acting now upon all
savage nations, and the theory indicates that it probably acted
with nearly equal strength a thousand years ago, and it may not
be much greater a thousand years hence.

Of the manners and habits that prevail among nations of
shepherds, the next state of mankind, we are even more ignorant
than of the savage state. But that these nations could not escape
the general lot of misery arising from the want of subsistence,
Europe, and all the fairest countries in the world, bear ample
testimony. Want was the goad that drove the Scythian shepherds
from their native haunts, like so many famished wolves in search
of prey. Set in motion by this all powerful cause, clouds of
Barbarians seemed to collect from all points of the northern