The inhabitants of a country may emigrate indi vidually; in which case they will be incorporated with the new community into which they enter, and their settlement will be made without violence; or a whole nation may emigrate, with a view of making their way to new settlements by the sword, and of driving out by force the inhabitants of the territory into which their irruption is made. Among civilized nations it is scarcely possible that this mode of emi gration can take place. No government would countenance its subjects in any predatory irruption. on the territory of another state ; neither would the wealth acquired by civilized communities, nor the habits of order, industry, and peace, which wealth necessarily superinduces, at all consist with any such hostile enterprises against the repose of other na tions. In an advanced state of society, therefore, the licence of emigration is, in some degree, re strained; mankind emigrate individually, but not in large bodies, and in this manner they are quietly absorbed in the new communities into which they enter, and to the laws and manners of which they necessarily conform. But though the civilized com munities of the world never violently emigrate into each other's territories, they frequently invade the domain of the savage, by obtruding new settlers on his uncultivated territories. These emigrating in considerable bodies, and being provided with every necessary implement either of cultivation or of war, take possession of the soil, which they cultivate for their support, and, gradually increasing in proportion as their improved modes of cultivation draw an in creased produce from the soil, all the efforts of the original proprietors to dislodge them are found un availing. From such small beginnings it is that, in modern times, all the flourishing communities of the new world have had their origin.
Among the barbarous nations of hunters and shep herds, emigration necessarily assumes the character of violence. The earth being already occupied with inhabitants, it is manifest that no large body of emi grants can effect a settlement in any territory, with out displacing an equal proportion of the original inhabitants. These, however, will not yield without a struggle ; wars naturally commence, which are carried on with an inveteracy suited to the import ant object at stake; and while the conqueror occu pies the vacant ground, the world is thinned of its superfluous inhabitants in these contests for room and food.
The want of subsistence, which thus excites in man. kind a restlessness and an impatience of their condi tion, and finally impels them to emigration, appears, from the experience of all history, to be a most fruit ful cause of war ; and, in these struggles, the mere savage has little chance against the more formidable violence either of the pastoral tribes, or of civilized communities. By the first he is driven from his ground whenever it can be occupied with advantage for the purposes of pasture ; while the civilized in. habitants of the globe occupy his territories with new settlers, who, spreading cultivation over the desert, and establishing towns with all their refine ments of arts and manufactures where there was formerly a wilderness, destroy the hunting-grounds of the savage, and expel him with the wild beasts, his natural prey, from these seats of industry. Thus driven farther into the woods, he is reduced to fight for his subsistence with other tribes in the same con dition as himself, and with whom he has more chance of waging an equal war. Room and subsistence be ing indispensable to the farther multiplication of the species, every combined movement among mankind in quest of these objects is the signal of discord; the savage tribes, confined to the more remote and un frequented parts of the earth, mutually exterminate each other by their constant and ferociqus hostility; and the pastoral nations carry on equally destructive contests with each other, or with more civilized com munities. Barbarism and civilization are in this man
ner the natural enemies of each other; and a most inveterate war is the inevitable consequence of this hostility. Or the issue of the contest, the very ex istence of both parties is staked. To the vanquish ed, nothing remains but to perish by famine or the destroying sword. If the barbarous invaders pre vail, all traces of civilization are swept away—the form of society is changed—its institutions destroy ed, and the nation itself reduced under the most de grading bondage. If, on the other hand, the barba rians are repelled, they have no refuge from destruc tion. There is no alternative between victory and death, and thus both parties mutually fight with the fury of desperation. But, where the resources of a civilized state are vigorously called forth for the com mon safety, those formidable inroads will be gener ally repelled, and the country saved from the igno miny of a barbarian yoke.
To this principle, namely, the disproportion be tween the increase of subsistence and of population, we may trace that spirit of emigration and of con quest which prevailed universally among all the pas toral nations of the ancient world. The character and manners of those rude tribes have been powerful ly delineated by the eloquent historian of the Roman Empire; and Mr Malthus has added a fine historical sketch of the rise and progress of those emigrations which, after a long train of political convulsions, ter minated at length in the subversion of the Roman , power. It appears, that all that vast portion of the earth, from the Danube and the shores of the Baltic to the confines of China, was formerly occupied by a population of shepherds. These, though distinguish ed into separate nations, possessing a strong principle of unity in the common tie of their congenial man ners, easily coalesced under an enterprising leader for any scheme of emigration or conquest. Deriving their subsistence from pasture and the chace, their ordinary life was one of constant migration, in which they were inured to fatigue, and instructed in the use of all warlike weapons; they were skilful horse men—expert in archery and in throwing the lance, and extremely active in all their movements. In this wide ocean of barbarism, the stream of emigration was either impelled eastward, as accidental circum stances directed, against the flourishing empires of Asia, or westward against the Roman empire, within whose precincts the whole civilization of the western world was comprised, and alternately, as it reached either of these empires, their whole collected strength was found necessary to withstand the shock. Of the great empires of Asia some were subverted by the formidable inroads of those wandering tribes; and in Europe, the doubtful balance of the world's destiny frequently trembled between barbarism and civilization. At an early period, Rome was assailed by the inroads of the barbarians, and an irruption of the Gauls had well nigh crushed her rising power. In after times, the Cimbri, emigrating in quest of new settlements, were, after they had destroyed five consular armies, arrested in their victorious career by Marius, when the whole nation almost was ex terminated. The subsequent contests of Julius Caesar, of Drusus, Tiberius, and Germanicus, with the Gauls and Germans, still attested the superiority of the Roman arms, and impressed upon the rians a salutary terror of the Roman name. Re.