PROOFS AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

NOTE [1]. PAGE 8.

THE consternation of the Britons, when invaded by the Picts and Caledonians after the Roman legions were called out of the islands, may give some idea of the degree of debasement to which the human mind was reduced by long ser. vitude under the Romans. In their supplicatory letter to Actius, which they call the Groans of Britain, “We know not," say they," which way to turn us. The barbarians drive us to the sea, and the sea forces us back on the barbarians; between which we have only the choice of two deaths, either to be swallowed up by the waves, or to be slain by the sword." Histor. Gildæ, ap. Gale, Hist. Britain. Script. p. 6.—One can hardly believe this dastardly race to be the descendants of that gallant people, who repulsed Cæsar, and defended their liberty so long against the Roman arms.

NOTE [2]. PAGE 8.

THE barbarous nations were not only illiterate, but regarded literature with contempt. They found the inhabitants of all the provinces of the empire sunk in effeminacy, and averse to war. Such a character was the object of scorn to a high-spirited and gallant race of men. When we would brand an

enemy," says Liutprandus, "with the most disgraceful and contumelious appellation, we call him a Roman; hoc solo, id est Romani nomine, quicquid ignobilitatis, quicquid timiditatis, quicquid avaritiæ, quicquid luxuriæ, quicquid mendacii, immo quicquid vitiorum est comprehendentes." Liutprandi Legatio apud Murat. Scriptor. Italic. vol. ii. pars 1. p. 481. This degeneracy of manners, illiterate barbarians imputed to their love of learning. Even after they settled in the countries which they had conquered, they would not permit their children to be instructed in any science; "for," said they, "instruction in the sciences tends to corrupt, enervate, and depress the mind; and he who has been accustomed to tremble under the rod of a pedagogue, will never look on a sword or spear with an undaunted eye." Procop. de bello Gothor. lib. i. p. 4. ap. Scrip. Byz. edit. Vennet. vol. i. A considerable number of years elapsed, before nations so rude, and so unwilling to learn, could produce historians capable of recording their transactions, or of describing their manners and institutions. By that time, the memory of their ancient condition was in a great measure lost, and few monuments remained to guide their first writers to any certain knowledge of it. If one expects to receive any satisfactory account of the manners and laws of the Goths, Lombards, or Franks, during their residence in those countries where they were originally seated, from Jornandes, Paulus Warnefridus, or Gregory of Tours, the earliest and most authentic historians of these people, he will be miserably disappointed. Whatever imperfect knowledge has been conveyed to us of their ancient state, we owe not to their own writers, but to the Greek and Roman historians.

NOTE [3]. PAGE 8.

A CIRCUMSTANCE, related by Priscus in his history of the embassy to Attila. king of the Huns, gives a striking view of the enthusiastic passion for war which prevailed among the barbarous nations. When the entertainment, to which that fierce conqueror admitted the Roman ambassadors, was ended, two Scythians advanced towards Attila, and recited a poem in which they celebrated his victories and military virtues. All the Huns fixed their eyes with attention on the bards. Some seemed to be delighted with the verses; others, remembering their own battles and exploits. exulted with joy; while such as were become

feeble through age, burst into tears, bewailing the decay of their vigour, and the state of inactivity in which they were now obliged to remain. Excerpta ex historia Prisci Rhetoris ap. Byzant. Histor. Script. vol. i. p. 45.

NOTE [4]. PAGE 11.

A REMARKABLE confirmation of both parts of this reasoning occurs in the history of England. The Saxons carried on the conquest of that country, with the same destructive spirit which distinguished the other barbarous nations. The ancient inhabitants of Britain were either exterminated, or forced to take shelter among the mountains of Wales, or reduced to servitude. The Saxon government, laws, manners and language were of consequence introduced into Britain; and were so perfectly established, that all memory of the institutions previous to their conquest of the country, was in a great measure lost. The very reverse of this happened in a subsequent revolution. A single victory placed William the Norman on the throne of England. The Saxon inhabitants, though oppressed, were not exterminated. William employed the utmost efforts of his power and policy to make his new subjects conform in every thing to the Norman standard, but without success. The Saxons, though vanquished, were far more numerous than their conquerors; when the two races began to incorporate, the Saxon laws and manners gradually gained ground. The Norman institutions became unpopular and odious; many of them fell into disuse, and in the English constitution and language, at this day, many essential parts are manifestly of Saxon, not of Norman extraction.

NOTE [5]. PAGE 11.

PROCOPIUS, the historian, declines, from a principle of benevolence, to give any particular detail of the cruelties of the Goths: "Lest," says he, "I should transmit a monument and example of inhumanity to succeeding ages." Proc. de bello Goth. lib. iii. cap. 10. ap. Byz. Script. vol. i. p. 126. But as the change, which I have pointed out as a consequence of the settlement of the barbarous nations in the countries formerly subject to the Roman empire, could not have taken place, if the greater part of the ancient inhabitants had not been extirpated, an event of such importance and influence merits a more particular illustration. This will justify me for exhibiting some part of that melancholy spectacle, over which humanity prompted Procopius to draw a veil. I shall not, however, disgust my readers by a minute narration; but rest satisfied with collecting some instances of the devastations made by two of the many nations which settled in the empire. The Vandals were the first of the barbarians who invaded Spain. It was one of the richest and most populous of the Roman provinces; the inhabitants had been distinguished for courage, and had defended their liberty against the arms of Rome, with greater obstinacy and during a longer course of years, than any nation in Europe. But so entirely were they enervated by their subjection to the Romans, that the Vandals, who entered the kingdom, A. D. 409, completed the conquest of it with such rapidity, that in the year 411, these barbarians divided it among them by casting lots. The desolation occasioned by their invasion, is thus described by Idatius an eyewitness: "The barbarians wasted every thing with hostile cruelty. The pestilence was no less destructive. A dreadful famine raged, to such a degree, that the living were constrained to feed on the dead bodies of their fellow-citizens; and all those terrible plagues desolated at once the unhappy kingdoms." Idatii Chron. ap. Biblioth. Patrum. vol. vii. p. 1233. edit. Ludg. 1677. The Goths having attacked the Vandals in their new settlements a fierce war ensued; the country was plundered by both parties; the cities which had escaped from destruction in the first invasion of the Vandals, were now laid in ashes, and the inhabitants exposed to suffer every thing that the wanton cruelty of barbarians could inflict. Idatius describes these scenes of inhumanity, ibid. p. 1235. b. 1236. c. f. A similar account of their devastation is given by Isidorus Hispalensis, and other contemporary writers. Isid. Chron. ap. Grot. hist. Goth. 732. From Spain the Vandals passed over into Africa, A. D. 428. Africa was, next to Egypt, the most fertile of the Roman provinces. It was one of the granaries of the empire, and is called by an ancient writer the soul of the commonwealth. Though the army with which the Vandals invaded it did not exceed

30,000 fighting men, they became absolute masters of the province in less than two years. A contemporary author gives a dreadful account of the havoc which they made: "They found a province well cultivated, and enjoying plenty, the beauty of the whole earth. They carried their destructive arms into every corner of it; they dispeopled it by their devastations; exterminating every thing with fire and sword. They did not even spare the vines and fruit trees, that those to whom caves and inaccessible mountains had afforded a retreat, might find no nourishment of any kind. Their hostile rage could not be satiated, and there was no place exempted from the effects of it. They tortured their prisoners with the most exquisite cruelty, that they might force from them a discovery of their hidden treasures. The more they discovered the more they expected, and the more implacable they became. Neither the infirmities of age nor of sex; neither the dignity of nobility, nor the sanctity of the sacerdotal office, could mitigate their fury; but the more illustrious their prisoners were, the more barbarously they insulted them. The public buildings which resisted the violence of the flames, they levelled with the ground. They left many cities without an inhabitant. When they approached any fortified place, which their undisciplined army could not reduce, they gathered together a multitude of prisoners, and putting them to the sword, left their bodies unburied, that the stench of the carcasses might oblige the garrison to abandon it." Victor Vitensis de persecutione Africana, ap. Bibl. Patrum, vol. viii. p. 666. St. Augustin, an African, who survived the conquest of his country by the Vandals some years, gives a similar description of their cruelties, Opera, vol. x. p. 372. edit. 1616.-About a hundred years after the settlement of the Vandals in Africa, Belisarius attacked and dispossessed them. Procopius, a contemporary historian, describes the devastation which that war occasioned. "Africa," says he, "was so entirely dispeopled that one might travel several days in it without meeting one man; and it is no exaggeration to say, that in the course of the war five millions of persons perished! Proc. Hist. Arcana, cap. 18. ap. Byz. Script. vol. i. 315.-I have dwelt longer upon the calamities of this province, because they are described not only by contemporary authors, but by eye-witnesses. The present state of Africa confirms their testimony. Many of the most flourishing and populous cities with which it was filled, were so entirely ruined, that no vestiges remain to point out where they were situated. That fertile territory which sustained the Roman empire, still lies in a great measure uncultivated; and that province, which Victor, in his barbarous Latin, called Speciositas totius terræ florentis, is now the retreat of pirates and banditti.

While the Vandals laid waste a great part of the empire, the Huns desolated the remainder. Of all the barbarous tribes they were the fiercest and most formidable. Ammianus Marcellinus, a contemporary author, and one of the best of the later historians, gives an account of their policy and manners; which nearly resembled those of the Scythians described by the ancients, and of the Tartars known to the moderns. Some parts of their character, and several of their customs are not unlike those of the Savages in North America. Their passion for war was extreme. "As in polished societies" says Ammianus, "ease and tranquillity are courted, they delight in war and dangers. He who falls in battle is reckoned happy. They who die of old age or of disease are deemed infamous. They boast, with the utmost exultation, of the number of enemies whom they have slain, and, as the most glorious of all ornaments, they fasten the scalps of those who have fallen by their hands to the trappings of their horses." Ammian. Marc. lib. xxxi. p. 477. edit. Gronov. Lugd. 1693.-Their incursions into the empire began in the fourth century; and the Romans, though no strangers, by that time, to the effects of barbarous rage, were astonished at the cruelty of their devastations. Thrace, Pannonia, and Illyricum, were the countries which they first laid desolate. As they had at first no intention of settling in Europe, they made only inroads of short continuance into the empire, but these were frequent, and Procopius computes that in each of these, at a medium, two hundred thousand persons perished, or were carried off as slaves. Procop. Hist. Arcan. ap. Byz. Script. vol. i. 316. Thrace, the best cultivated province in that quarter of the empire, was converted into a desert, and, when Priscus accompanied the ambassadors sent to

Attila, there were no inhabitants in some of the cities but a few miserable people who had taken shelter among the ruins of the churches; and the fields were covered with the bones of those who had fallen by the sword. Priscus ap. Byz. Script. vol. i. 34. Attila became king of the Huns, A. D. 434. He is one of the greatest and most enterprising conquerors mentioned in history. He extended his empire over all the vast countries comprehended under the general names of Scythia and Germany in the ancient division of the world. While he was carrying on his wars against the barbarous nations, he kept the Roman empire under perpetual apprehensions, and extorted enormous subsidies from the timid and effeminate monarchs who governed it. In the year 451, he entered Gaul, at the head of an army composed of all the various nations which he had subdued. It was more numerous than any with which the barbarians had hitherto invaded the empire. The devastations which he committed were horrible; not only the open country, but the most flourishing cities, were desolated. The extent and cruelty of his devastations are described by Salvianus de Gubernat. Dei, edit. Baluz. Par. 1669. p. 139, &c. and by Idatius, ubi supra, p. 1235. Aetius put a stop to his progress in that country by the famous battle of Chalons, in which, (if we may believe the historians of that age) three hundred thousand persons perished. Idat. Ibid. Jornandes de Rebus Geticis. ap. Grot. Hist. Gothr. p. 671. Amst. 1665. But the next year he resolved to attack the centre of the empire, and marching into Italy, wasted it with rage, inflamed by the sense of his late disgrace. What Italy suffered by the Huns, exceeded all the calamities which the preceding barbarians had brought upon it. Conringius has collected several passages from the ancient historians, which prove that the devastations committed by the Vandals and Huns, in the countries situated on the banks of the Rhine, were no less cruel and fatal to the human race. Exercitatio de urbibus Germaniæ, Opera, vol. i. 488. It is endless, it is shocking, to follow these destroyers of mankind through so many scenes of horror, and to contemplate the havoc which they made of the human species.

But the state in which Italy appears to have been, during several ages after the barbarous nations settled in it, is the most decisive proof of the cruelty as well as extent of their devastations. Whenever any country is thinly inhabited, trees and shrubs spring up in the uncultivated fields, and spreading by degrees, form large forests; by the overflowing of rivers, and the stagnating of waters, other parts of it are converted into lakes and marshes. Ancient Italy, which the Romans rendered the seat of elegance and luxury, was cultivated to the highest pitch. But so effectually did the devastations of the barbarians destroy all the effects of Roman industry and cultivation, that in the eighth century a considerable part of Italy appears to have been covered with forests and marshes of great extent. Muratori enters into a minute detail concerning the situation and limits of several of these; and proves by the most authentic evidence, that great tracts of territory, in all the different provinces of Italy, were either overrun with wood, or laid under water. Nor did these occupy parts of the country naturally barren or of little value, but were spread over districts which ancient writers represent as extremely fertile, and which at present are highly cultivated. Muratori Antiquitates Italicæ medii ævi, dissert. xxi. v. ii. p. 149. 153, &c. A strong proof of this occurs in a description of the city of Modena, by an author of the tenth century. Murat. Script. Rerum Italic. vol. ii. pars ii. p. 691. The state of desolation in other countries of Europe seems to have been the same. In many of the most early charters now extant, the lands granted to monasteries, or to private persons, are distinguished into such as are cultivated or inhabited, and such as were eremi, desolate. In many instances, lands are granted to persons because they had taken them from the desert, ab eremo, and had cultivated and planted them with inhabitants. This appears from a charter of Charlemagne, published by Eckhart de Rebus Francia Orientalis, vol. ii. p. 864, and from many charters of his successors quoted by Du Cange, voc. eremus.-Wherever a right of property in land can be thus acquired, it is evident that the country must be extremely desolate and thinly peopled. The first settlers in America obtained possession of land by such a title. Whoever was able to clear and cultivate a field, was recognised as the proprietor. His industry merited such a recom

pense. The grants in the charters which I have mentioned flow from a similar principle, and there must have been some resemblance in the state of the countries.

Muratori adds, that during the eighth and ninth centuries, Italy was greatly infested with wolves and other wild beasts; another mark of its being destitute of inhabitants. Murat. Antiq. vol. ii. p. 163. Thus Italy, the pride of the ancient world for its fertility and cultivation, was reduced to the state of a country newly peopled and lately rendered habitable.

I am sensible, not only that some of these descriptions of the devastations, which I have quoted, may be exaggerated, but that the barbarous tribes, in making their settlements, did not proceed invariably in the same manner. Some of them seemed to be bent on exterminating the ancient inhabitants; others were more disposed to incorporate with them. It is not my province either to inquire into the causes which occasioned this variety in the conduct of the conquerors, or to describe the state of those countries where the ancient inhabitants were treated most mildly. The facts which I have produced are sufficient to justify the account which I have given in the text, and to prove, that the destruction of the human species, occasioned by the hostile invasions of the northern nations and their subsequent settlements, was much greater than many authors seem to imagine.

NOTE [6]. PAGE 12.

I HAVE observed, Note [2.] that our only certain information concerning the ancient state of the barbarous nations must be derived from the Greek and Roman writers. Happily an account of the institutions and customs of one people, to which those of all the rest seem to have been in a great measure similar, has been transmitted to us by two authors, the most capable, perhaps, that ever wrote, of observing them with profound discernment, and of describing them with propriety and force. The reader must perceive that Cæsar and Tacitus are the authors whom I have in view. The former gives a short account of the ancient Germans in a few chapters of the sixth book of his Commentaries; the latter wrote a treatise expressly on that subject. These are the most precious and instructive monuments of antiquity to the present inhabitants of Europe. From them we learn,

1. That the state of society among the ancient Germans was of the rudest and most simple form. They subsisted entirely by hunting or by pasturage. Cæs. lib. vi. c. 21. They neglected agriculture, and lived chiefly on milk, cheese, and flesh. Ibid. c. 22. Tacitus agrees with him in most of these points. De Morib. Germ. c. 14, 15. 23. The Goths were equally negligent of agriculture. Prisc. Rhet. ap. Byz. Script. v. i. p. 31. B. Society was in the same state among the Huns, who disdained to cultivate the earth, or to touch a plough. Amm. Marcel. lib. xxxi. p. 475. The same manners took place among the Alans; ibid. p. 477. While society remains in this simple state, men by uniting together scarcely relinquish any portion of their natural independence. Accordingly we are informed, 2. That the authority of civil government was extremely limited among the Germans. During times of peace they had no common or fixed magistrate, but the chief men of every district dispensed justice and accommodated differences, Cæs. ibid. c. 23. Their kings had not absolute or unbounded power; their authority consisted rather in the privilege of advising, than in the power of commanding. Matters of small consequence were determined by the chief men; affairs of importance by the whole community. Tacit. c. 7. 11. The Huns, in like manner, deliberated in common concerning every business of moment to the society; and were not subject to the rigour of regal authority. Amm. Marcel. lib. xxxi. p. 474. 3. Every individual among the ancient Germans was left at liberty to choose whether he would take part in any military enterprise which was proposed; there seems to have been no obligation to engage in it imposed on him by public authority. "When any of the chief men propose an expedition, such as approve of the cause and of the leader rise up, and declare their intention of following him after coming under this engagement, those who do not fulfil it, are considered as deserters and traitors, and are looked upon as infamous." Cæs. ibid. c. 23. Tacitus plainly points at the same custom, though in terms more obscure