ps its effects equal to the means
of subsistence. Actual observation and experience tell us that this
check, with a few local and temporary exceptions, is constantly acting
now upon all savage nations, and the theory indicates that it probably
acted with nearly equal strength a thousand years ago, and it may not
be much greater a thousand years hence.

Of the manners and habits that prevail among nations of shepherds, the
next state of mankind, we are even more ignorant than of the savage
state. But that these nations could not escape the general lot of
misery arising from the want of subsistence, Europe, and all the
fairest countries in the world, bear ample testimony. Want was the goad
that drove the Scythian shepherds from their native haunts, like so
many famished wolves in search of prey. Set in motion by this all
powerful cause, clouds of Barbarians seemed to collect from all points
of the northern hemisphere. Gathering fresh darkness and terror as they
rolled on, the congregated bodies at length obscured the sun of Italy
and sunk the whole world in universal night. These tremendous effects,
so long and so deeply felt throughout the fairest portions of the
earth, may be traced to the simple cause of the superior power of
population to the means of subsistence.

It is well known that a country in pasture cannot support so many
inhabitants as a country in tillage, but what renders nations of
shepherds so formidable is the power which they possess of moving all
together and the necessity they frequently feel of exerting this power
in search of fresh pasture for their herds. A tribe that was rich in
cattle had an immediate plenty of food. Even the parent stock might be
devoured in a case of absolute necessity. The women lived in greater
ease than among nations of hunters. The men bold in their united
strength and confiding in their power of procuring pasture for their
cattle by change of place, felt, probably, but few fears about
providing for a family. These combined causes soon produced their
natural and invariable effect, an extended population. A more frequent
and rapid change of place became then necessary. A wider and more
extensive territory was successively occupied. A broader desolation
extended all around them. Want pinched the less fortunate members of
the society, and, at length, the impossibility of supporting such a
number together became too evident to be resisted. Young scions were
then pushed out fr