the commonwealth.  Afterwards they caused almost all the Africans, their tributaries, to revolt; they grew in a short time to be 70,000 strong; they fought several battles with Hanno and Hamilcar Barcas.  During these transactions, the mercenaries that were in garrison in Sardinia mutinied likewise, murdering their commander and all the Carthaginians; while Spendius and Matho, to render their accomplices more desperate, put Gesco to a cruel death, presuming afterwards to lay siege to Carthage itself.  They met with a shock indeed at Prion, where 40,000 of them were slaughtered; but soon after this battle, in another they took one of the Carthaginian generals prisoner, whom they fixed to a cross, crucifying thirty of the principal senators round about him.  Spendius and Matho were at last taken, the one crucified and the other tormented to death:  but the war lasted three years and near four months with excessive cruelty; in which the State of Carthage lost several battles, and was often brought within a hair’s-breadth of utter ruin.

If so great a commonwealth as Carthage, though assisted at that time by Hiero, King of Syracuse, and by the Romans, ran the hazard of losing their empire, city, and liberties, by the insurrection of a handful of mercenaries, whose first strength was but 20,000 men; it should be a warning to all free nations how they suffer armies so composed to be among them, and it should frighten a wise State from desiring such an increase of people as may be had by the bringing over foreign soldiers.

Indeed, all armies whatsoever, if they are over-large, tend to the dispeopling of a country, of which our neighbour nation is a sufficient proof, where in one of the best climates in Europe men are wanting to till the ground.  For children do not proceed from the intemperate pleasures taken loosely and at random, but from a regular way of living, where the father of the family desires to rear up and provide for the offspring he shall beget.

Securing the liberties of a nation may be laid down as a fundamental for increasing the numbers of its people; but there are other polities thereunto conducing which no wise State has ever neglected.

No race of men did multiply so fast as the Jews, which may be attributed chiefly to the wisdom of Moses their Lawgiver, in contriving to promote the state of marriage.

The Romans had the same care, paying no respect to a man childless by his own fault, and giving great immunities and privileges, both in the city and provinces, to those who had such and such a number of children.  Encouragements of the like kind are also given in France to such as enrich the commonwealth by a large issue.