at requires previous
explanation.

_________________________________________________________________

I think it well to embrace this opportunity, the best I have had, and,
perhaps, the last I ever shall have, of making some return, (as far as
acknowledgement is a return,) for an obligation, of a nature never to
be repaid, by acknowledging publicly, that, to the best and most
affectionate of brothers, I owe the invention of those Charts.

At a very early period of my life, my brother, who, in a most
examplary manner, maintained and educated the family his father left,
made me keep a register of a thermometer, expressing the variations
by lines on a divided scale. He taught me to know, that, whatever can
be expressed in numbers, may be represented by lines. The Chart of
the thermometer was on the same principle with those given here; the
application only is different. The brother to whom I owe this, now
fills the Natural Philosophy Chair in the University of Edinburgh_.

[end of page #xvi]

CONTENTS.

---o0o---

Page.

=BOOK I.=

CHAP. I.

INTRODUCTION and plan of the work.--Explanation of what the
author understands by wealthy and powerful nations, and of the
general cause of wealth and power......1

CHAP. II.

Of the general causes that operate, both externally and internally, in
bringing down nations that have risen above their level to that
assigned to them by their extent, fertility, and population; and of the
manner in which wealth destroyed power in ancient
nations...............14

CHAP. III.

Of the nations that rose to wealth and power previous to the conquests
in Asia and Africa, and the causes which ruined them...............20

CHAP. IV.

Of the Romans.--The causes of their rise under the republic, and of
their decline under the emperors.--The great error generally fallen
into with respect to the comparison between Rome and Carthage;
proofs that it is wrong, and not at all applicable to France and
England................27

CHAP. V.

Of the cities and nations that rose to wealth and power in the middle
ages, after the fall of the Western Empire, and previous to the
discovery of the passage to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope,
and of America.--Different effects of wealth on nations in cold and in
warm climates, and of the fall of the Eastern Empi