An Essay on the Principle of Population | Page 9

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 from the
parent-stock and instructed to explore fresh regions and to gain happier
seats for themselves by their swords. 'The world was all before them
where to choose.' Restless from present distress, flushed with the hope
of fairer prospects, and animated with the spirit of hardy enterprise,
these daring adventurers were likely to become formidable adversaries
to all who opposed them. The peaceful inhabitants of the countries on
which they rushed could not long withstand the energy of men acting
under such powerful motives of exertion. And when they fell in with
any tribes like their own, the contest was a struggle for existence, and
they fought with a desperate courage, inspired by the rejection that
death was the punishment of defeat and life the prize of victory.
In these savage contests many tribes must have been utterly
exterminated. Some, probably, perished by hardship and famine. Others,
whose leading star had given them a happier direction, became great
and powerful tribes, and, in their turns, sent off fresh adventurers in
search of still more fertile seats. The prodigious waste of human life
occasioned by this perpetual struggle for room and food was more than
supplied by the mighty power of population, acting, in some degree,
unshackled from the consent habit of emigration. The tribes that
migrated towards the South, though they won these more fruitful
regions by continual battles, rapidly increased in number and power,
from the increased means of subsistence. Till at length the whole
territory, from the confines of China to the shores of the Baltic, was
peopled by a various race of Barbarians, brave, robust, and enterprising,
inured to hardship, and delighting in war. Some tribes maintained their
independence. Others ranged themselves under the standard of some
barbaric chieftain who led them to victory after victory, and what was
of more importance, to regions abounding in corn, wine, and oil, the
long wished for consummation, and great reward of their labours. An
Alaric, an Attila, or a Zingis Khan, and the chiefs around them, might
fight for glory, for the fame of extensive conquests, but the true cause
that set in motion the great tide of northern emigration, and that
continued to propel it till it rolled at different periods against China,

Persia, Italy, and even Egypt, was a scarcity of food, a population
extended beyond the means of supporting it.
The absolute population at any one period, in proportion to the extent
of territory, could never be great, on account of the unproductive nature
of some of the regions occupied; but there appears to have been a most
rapid succession of human beings, and as fast as some were mowed
down by the scythe of war or of famine, others rose in increased
numbers to supply their place. Among these bold and improvident
Barbarians, population was probably but little checked, as in modern
states, from a fear of future difficulties. A prevailing hope of bettering
their condition by change of place, a constant expectation of plunder, a
power even, if distressed, of selling their children as slaves, added to
the natural carelessness of the barbaric character, all conspired to raise
a population which remained to be repressed afterwards by famine or
war.
Where there is any inequality of conditions, and among nations of
shepherds this soon takes place, the distress arising from a scarcity of
provisions must fall hardest upon the least fortunate members of the
society. This distress also must frequently have been felt by the women,
exposed to casual plunder in the absence of their husbands, and subject
to continual disappointments in their expected return.
But without knowing enough of the minute and intimate history of
these people, to point out precisely on what part the distress for want of
food chiefly fell, and to what extent it was generally felt, I think we
may fairly say, from all the accounts that we have of nations of
shepherds, that