Of the manners and habits that prevail among nations of shepherds, the next state of mankind, we are even more ignorant than of the savage state.  But that these nations could not escape the general lot of misery arising from the want of subsistence, Europe, and all the fairest countries in the world, bear ample testimony.  Want was the goad that drove the Scythian shepherds from their native haunts, like so many famished wolves in search of prey.  Set in motion by this all powerful cause, clouds of Barbarians seemed to collect from all points of the northern hemisphere.  Gathering fresh darkness and terror as they rolled on, the congregated bodies at length obscured the sun of italy and sunk the whole world in universal night.  These tremendous effects, so long and so deeply felt throughout the fairest portions of the earth, may be traced to the simple cause of the superior power of population to the means of subsistence.

It is well known that a country in pasture cannot support so many inhabitants as a country in tillage, but what renders nations of shepherds so formidable is the power which they possess of moving all together and the necessity they frequently feel of exerting this power in search of fresh pasture for their herds.  A tribe that was rich in cattle had an immediate plenty of food.  Even the parent stock might be devoured in a case of absolute necessity.  The women lived in greater ease than among nations of hunters.  The men bold in their united strength and confiding in their power of procuring pasture for their cattle by change of place, felt, probably, but few fears about providing for a family.  These combined causes soon produced their natural and invariable effect, an extended population.  A more frequent and rapid change of place became then necessary.  A wider and more extensive territory was successively occupied.  A broader desolation extended all around them.  Want pinched the less fortunate members of the society, and, at length, the impossibility of supporting such a number together became too evident to be resisted.  Young scions were then pushed out from the parent-stock and instructed to explore fresh regions and to gain happier seats for themselves by their swords.  ’The world was all before them where to choose.’  Restless from present distress, flushed with the hope of fairer prospects, and animated with the spirit of hardy enterprise, these daring adventurers were likely to become formidable adversaries to all who opposed them.  The peaceful inhabitants of the countries on which they rushed could not long withstand the energy of men acting under such powerful motives of exertion.  And when they fell in with any tribes like their own, the contest was a struggle for existence, and they fought with a desperate courage, inspired by the rejection that death was the punishment of defeat and life the prize of victory.