r inhabitants. What has been done since, and what will
continue to be done while the same inducements to war continue, I shall
not dwell upon. I shall only in one word mention the horrid effects of
bigotry and avarice, in the conquest of Spanish America; a conquest, on
a low estimation, effected by the murder of ten millions of the species.
I shall draw to a conclusion of this part, by making a general
calculation of the whole. I think I have actually mentioned above
thirty-six millions. I have not particularized any more. I don't pretend
to exactness; therefore, for the sake of a general view, I shall lay
together all those actually slain in battles, or who have perished in a
no less miserable manner by the other destructive consequences of war
from the beginning of the world to this day, in the four parts of it, at
a thousand times as much; no exaggerated calculation, allowing for time
and extent. We have not perhaps spoke of the five-hundredth part; I am
sure I have not of what is actually ascertained in history; but how much
of these butcheries are only expressed in generals, what part of time
history has never reached, and what vast spaces of the habitable globe
it has not embraced, I need not mention to your lordship. I need not
enlarge on those torrents of silent and inglorious blood which have
glutted the thirsty sands of Afric, or discolored the polar snow, or
fed the savage forests of America for so many ages of continual war.
Shall I, to justify my calculations from the charge of extravagance, add
to the account those skirmishes which happen in all wars, without being
singly of sufficient dignity in mischief, to merit a place in history,
but which by their frequency compensate for this comparative innocence?
shall I inflame the account by those general massacres which have
devoured whole cities and nations; those wasting pestilences, those
consuming famines, and all those furies that follow in the train of war?
I have no need to exaggerate; and I have purposely avoided a parade of
eloquence on this occasion. I should despise it upon any occasion; else
in mentioning these slaughters, it is obvious how much the whole might
be heightened, by an affecting description of the horrors that attend
the wasting of kingdoms, and sacking of cities. But I do not write to
the vulgar, nor to that which only governs the vulgar, their passions. I
go upon a naked and moderate calculation, just enough, without a
pedantical exactn