of wealth at this time, every one, I doubt not,
who could afford a domestic slave, kept one; and generally, the number
of slaves was in proportion to the wealth. I do not believe that the
cultivation of the soil by slaves was confined to Italy; the holders
of large estates in the provinces would probably, either from choice
or necessity, adopt the same mode of cultivation. The latifundia, says
Pliny, had ruined Italy, and had begun to ruin the provinces. Slaves
were no doubt employed in agricultural labor to a great extent in
Sicily, and were the estates of those six enormous landholders who
were said to have possessed the whole province of Africa, cultivated
altogether by free coloni? Whatever may have been the case in the rural
districts, in the towns and cities the household duties were almost
entirely discharged by slaves, and vast numbers belonged to the public
establishments. I do not, however, differ so far from Zumpt, and from
M. Dureau de la Malle, as to adopt the higher and bolder estimate of
Robertson and Mr. Blair, rather than the more cautious suggestions of
Gibbon. I would reduce rather than increase the proportion of the slave
population. The very ingenious and elaborate calculations of the French
writer, by which he deduces the amount of the population from the
produce and consumption of corn in Italy, appear to me neither precise
nor satisfactory bases for such complicated political arithmetic.
I am least satisfied with his views as to the population of the city
of Rome; but this point will be more fitly reserved for a note on the
thirty-first chapter of Gibbon. The work, however, of M. Dureau de la
Malle is very curious and full on some of the minuter points of Roman
statistics.--M. 1845.]

[Footnote 62: Compute twenty millions in France, twenty-two in Germany,
four in Hungary, ten in Italy with its islands, eight in Great Britain
and Ireland, eight in Spain and Portugal, ten or twelve in the European
Russia, six in Poland, six in Greece and Turkey, four in Sweden, three
in Denmark and Norway, four in the Low Countries. The whole would
amount to one hundred and five, or one hundred and seven millions. See
Voltaire, de l'Histoire Generale. * Note: The present population of
Europe is estimated at 227,700,000. Malts Bran, Geogr. Trans edit. 1832
See details in the different volumes Another authority, (Almanach de
Gotha,) quoted in a recent English publication, gives the following
details:--

France, 32,