d to issue, from the great
storehouse of nations, were multiplied by the fears of the vanquished,
and by the credulity of succeeding ages. And from facts thus
exaggerated, an opinion was gradually established, and has been
supported by writers of distinguished reputation, that, in the age of
Caesar and Tacitus, the inhabitants of the North were far more numerous
than they are in our days. A more serious inquiry into the causes of
population seems to have convinced modern philosophers of the falsehood,
and indeed the impossibility, of the supposition. To the names of
Mariana and of Machiavel, we can oppose the equal names of Robertson and
Hume.

A warlike nation like the Germans, without either cities, letters, arts,
or money, found some compensation for this savage state in the enjoyment
of liberty. Their poverty secured their freedom, since our desires
and our possessions are the strongest fetters of despotism. "Among the
Suiones (says Tacitus) riches are held in honor. They are therefore
subject to an absolute monarch, who, instead of intrusting his people
with the free use of arms, as is practised in the rest of Germany,
commits them to the safe custody, not of a citizen, or even of a
freedman, but of a slave. The neighbors of the Suiones, the Sitones, are
sunk even below servitude; they obey a woman." In the mention of these
exceptions, the great historian sufficiently acknowledges the general
theory of government. We are only at a loss to conceive by what means
riches and despotism could penetrate into a remote corner of the North,
and extinguish the generous flame that blazed with such fierceness on
the frontier of the Roman provinces, or how the ancestors of those Danes
and Norwegians, so distinguished in latter ages by their unconquered
spirit, could thus tamely resign the great character of German liberty.
Some tribes, however, on the coast of the Baltic, acknowledged the
authority of kings, though without relinquishing the rights of men,
but in the far greater part of Germany, the form of government was a
democracy, tempered, indeed, and controlled, not so much by general
and positive laws, as by the occasional ascendant of birth or valor, of
eloquence or superstition.

Civil governments, in their first institution, are voluntary
associations for mutual defence. To obtain the desired end, it is
absolutely necessary that each individual should conceive himself
obliged to submit his private opinions and action