Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 1.djvu/288

 264, THE DECLINE AND FALL C II A P. productions of a happier climate •. And in the same manner the German auxiliaries, invited into France during the civil wars of the sixteenth century, were allured by the promise of plenteous quarters in the provinces of Champagne and Burgundy *". Drunken- ness, the most illiberal, but not the most dangerous of our vices, was sometimes capable, in a less civilized state of mankind, of occasioning a battle, a war, or a revolution. State of po- The climate of ancient Germany has been mollified, puiation. ^^^ ^j^g g^jj fertilized, by the labour of ten centuries from the time of Charlemagne. The same extent of ground which at present maintains, in ease and plenty, a million of husbandmen and artificers, was unable to supply an hundred thousand lazy warriors with the simple necessaries of life". The Germans abandoned their immense forests to the exercise of hunting, em- ployed in pasturage the most considerable part of their lands, bestowed on the small remainder a rude and careless cultivation, and then accused the scantiness and sterility of a country that refused to maintain the multitude of its inhabitants. When the return of fa- mine severely admonished them of the importance of the arts, the national distress was sometimes alleviated by the emigration of a third, perhaps, or a fourth part of their youth °. The possession and the enjoyment of property are the pledges which bind a civihzed people to an improved country. But the Germans, who car- ried with them what they most valued, their arms, their cattle, and their women, cheerfully abandoned the vast silence of their woods for the unbounded ' Plutarch, in Camillo ; T. Liv. v. 33. "» Du Bos, Hist, de la Monarchic Fran9oise, tora. i. p. 193. n The Helvetian nation which issued from the country called Switzer- land, contained, of every age and sex, three hundred and sixty-eight thou- sand persons. Caesar de Bell. Gall. i. 29. At present, the number of people in the Pays de Vaud (a small district on the banks of the Leraanlake, much more distinguished for politeness than for industry) amounts to one hundred and twelve thousand five hundred and ninety-one. See an excellent tract of M. Muret, in the Memoires de la Soci^te de Bern. o Paul Diaconus, c. 1,2, 3. Machiavel, Davila, and the rest of Paul's followers, represent these emigrations too much as regular and concerted measures.