Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/440

388 can be made for the safety of the people are there of least use.

OUNTRIES are not cultivated in proportion to their fertility, but to their liberty; and if we make an imaginary division of the earth, we shall be astonished to see in most ages, deserts in the most fruitful parts, and great nations in those, where nature seems to refuse every thing.

It is natural for a people to leave a bad country to seek a better; and not to leave a good country to seek a worse. Most of the invasions have therefore been made in countries, which nature seems to have formed for happiness: and as nothing is more nearly allied than desolation and invasion, the best countries are most frequently depopulated; while the frightful countries of the north continue always inhabited, from their being almost uninhabitable.

We find by what historians tell us of the passage of the people of Scandinavia, along the banks of the Danube, that this was not a conquest, but only a migration into desert countries.

These happy climates must therefore have been depopulated by other migrations, though we know not the tragical scenes that happened.

"It appears by many monuments of antiquity, says Aristotle, that the Sardinians were a Grecian colony. They were formerly very rich; and Aristeus, so famed for his love of agriculture, Rh