Having thus joined themselves together, and having formed themselves into several large and distinct bodies, they could not fail of submitting soon to a more considerable change.  Their numbers must have rapidly increased, and their societies, in process of time, have become so populous, as frequently to have experienced the want of subsistence, and many of the commotions and tumults of intestine strife.  For these inconveniences however there were remedies to be found. Agriculture would furnish them with that subsistence and support, which the earth, from the rapid increase of its inhabitants, had become unable spontaneously to produce.  An assignation of property would not only enforce an application, but excite an emulation, to labour; and government would at once afford a security to the acquisitions of the industrious, and heal the intestine disorders of the community, by the introduction of laws.

Such then were the remedies, that were gradually applied.  The societies, which had hitherto seen their members, undistinguished either by authority or rank, admitted now of magistratical pre-eminence.  They were divided into tribes; to every tribe was allotted a particular district for its support, and to every individual his particular spot.  The Germans[041], who consisted of many and various nations, were exactly in this situation.  They had advanced a step beyond the Scythians, Goetulians, and those, whom we described before; and thus was the third situation of mankind a state of subordinate society.

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FOOTNOTES

[Footnote 036:  This conclusion concerning the dissociated state of mankind, is confirmed by all the early writers, with whose descriptions of primitive times no other conclusion is reconcileable.]

[Footnote 037:  Justin.  L. 2.  C. 2.]

[Footnote 038:  Sallust.  Bell.  Jug.]

[Footnote 039:  Sallust.  Bell.  Catil.]

[Footnote 040:  Ammianus Marcellinus.  L. 31.  C. 2. et. inseq.]

[Footnote 041:  Agri pro Numero Cultorum ab universis per vicos occupantur, quos mox inter se secundum dignationem partiuntur.  Tacitus.  C. 26. de Mor.  Germ.]

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CHAP.  II.

As we have thus traced the situation of man from unbounded liberty to subordination, it will be proper to carry our inquiries farther, and to consider, who first obtained the pre-eminence in these primoeval societies, and by what particular methods it was obtained.