sted chiefly by pasturage or hunting. These are occupations which
spread the people without multiplying them in proportion; they teach
them an extensive knowledge of the country; they carry them frequently
and far from their homes, and weaken those ties which might attach them
to any particular habitation.

It was in a great degree from this manner of life that mankind became
scattered in the earliest times over the whole globe. But their peaceful
occupations did not contribute so much to that end as their wars, which
were not the less frequent and violent because the people were few, and
the interests for which they contended of but small importance. Ancient
history has furnished us with many instances of whole nations, expelled
by invasion, falling in upon others, which they have entirely
overwhelmed,--more irresistible in their defeat and ruin than in their
fullest prosperity. The rights of war were then exercised with great
inhumanity. A cruel death, or a servitude scarcely less cruel, was the
certain fate of all conquered people; the terror of which hurried men
from habitations to which they were but little attached, to seek
security and repose under any climate that, however in other respects
undesirable, might afford them refuge from the fury of their enemies.
Thus the bleak and barren regions of the North, not being peopled by
choice, were peopled as early, in all probability, as many of the milder
and more inviting climates of the Southern world; and thus, by a
wonderful disposition of the Divine Providence, a life of hunting, which
does not contribute to increase, and war, which is the great instrument
in the destruction of men, were the two principal causes of their being
spread so early and so universally over the whole earth. From what is
very commonly known of the state of North America, it need not be said
how often and to what distance several of the nations on that continent
are used to migrate, who, though thinly scattered, occupy an immense
extent of country. Nor are the causes of it less obvious,--their hunting
life, and their inhuman wars.

Such migrations, sometimes by choice, more frequently from necessity,
were common in the ancient world. Frequent necessities introduced a
fashion which subsisted after the original causes. For how could it
happen, but from some universally established public prejudice, which
always overrules and stifles the private sense of men, that a whole
nation should delibe