Some days ago I was at a supper given by some ladies in the country. All the way they kept saying, “ We must at least enjoy ourselves immensely.”
We happened to be very ill paired, and were*conse- quently very dull. " I must confe.ss,” said one of these ladies, “ that we are very merry; there is not in Paris to-day a party so gay as ours.” As the wearisomeness of it all began to overpower me, a lady rallied me, and said, “ Well, are we not getting on charmingly? ” "Yes,” I replied, yawning; "I believe I shall split my sides laughing.” Melancholy, however, invaded all our thoughts; and as for me, I felt myself fall from yawn to yawn into a lethargic sleep, which put an end to all my mirth.
Paris, the nth of the moon of Maharram, 1718.
LETTER CXII LETTER CXII‘ Usbek to * * * The reign of the late king was so long that the end of it had caused the beginning to be forgotten. Now it is the fashion to occupy oneself with the events that happened in his minority; and nothing is read but the memoirs of these times.
Here is the speech which one of the generals of the city of Paris delivered at 'a council of war: I confess I do not sec anythir^g very remarkable in it: " Gentlemen, although our troops have been re- pulsed with loss, I think it will be easy to retrieve this misfortune. I have six couplets all ready to publish, which I am certain will restore all matters to a proper balance. I have chosen some admirably clear voices, which issuing from the cavity of certain very powerful chests, will move the^ people wonder- fully. They are set to an air which has hitherto produced quite a peculiar effect.
“If ^lis is not enough, we can bring out a print representing Mazarin hanged.
“ Fortunately for us, he does not speak French well; and he mutilates it in such a way, that his importance cannot fail to decline. We take care to make the people observe with what a ridiculous accent he speaks it.* Some days ago we made such sport of an absurd' mistake in grammar, that it is now a joke in all the streets.
1 The fifth of the letters added in 1754.
* Cardinal Mazarin, having occasion to use the phrase, " I’arrSt d’union,” before the parliamentary deputies, pro- nounced it, " TarrSt d’ognon," a slip of which the people made great fun. — (M.)
PERSIAN LETTERS “ I hope that before eight ^ays have passed, the people will make the name of Mazarin a generic term to express all the beasts of burden and beasts of draught.
“ Since our defeat, our songs about original sin have annoyed 'aim so much, that, to save his party from being reduced to half, he has been forced to send away all his pages. * “ Rouse yourselves then; take courage, and be sure that with our hisses we shall send him packing over the mountains.”* Paris, the 4th of the mooh of Chahban, 1718.
LETTER CXIII Rhedi to Usbek, at Paris I During my stay in Europe, I read the ancient and modern historians: I compare all times; I please myself with watching them pass before me as it were; above all, my thoughts are fixed upon those great changes which have made the ages so differcyit from each other, and the earth so unlike itself.
You have perhaps given some attention to a matter which continually occasions my surprise. How is the world so thinly peopled in comparison with what it was once? ^ How has nature lost the wonderful fruitfulness of the first ages? Can it be that she is already old and fallen into decline?
I dwelt for more than a year in Italy, where I saw nothing but the ruins of that ancient Italy, so famous 1 Some countries were, in Montesquieu's time, and are now, less populous than in their earlier history; but that the modern world contains fewer people than the antique one, is an assertion for which there is no proof.
LETTER CXIII in former times. AlUiough all the people live in the towns, they are quite deserted and empty: they seem to exist only to indicate the places where those powerful cities stood of which history says so much.
Some people here pretend that the city of Rome alone contained formerly more peopTe than one of the ^eat kingdoms of Europe does to-day. There were Roman citizens who had ten, and even twenty thousand slavey without counting those employed in their country houses; and as it is calculated that there were four or five hundred thousitnd citizens, the imagi- nation rebels at any attempts to fix the number of the inhabitants. * In Sicily, there were formerly powerful and densely peopled kingdoms, which have since disappeared; that island has nothing more notable now than volcanoes.
Greece is so deserted that it does not contain a hundredth part of its ancient inhabitants.
Spain, once so crowded, can now «how only unin- habited lands; and France is nothing compared with that ancient Gaul of which Caesar speaks.* The Countries of the north are sadly thinned; and the people no longer require, as formerly, to divide themselves, and.set out in swarms, in colonies, in whole nations, to seek for new abodes.
Poland and Turkey in Europe have almost no inhabitants.
We cannot find in America the fiftieth part of the men who formed the great empires there.
Asia is hardly in a better state. Asia Minor, which contained so many powerful monarchies, and such an immense number of great cities, has now no more * In one sense true, as Caesar’s Gaul was covered with forests.
PERSIAN LETTERS than two or three. As regards^^the greater Asia, that part which is under the Turk is not more populous; and if that part of it which is under the dominion of our kings be compared with the prosperous state in which it once was, it will be found to contain a very small part of The innumerable inhabitants which it possessed in the times of Xerxes and Darius.
As for the petty states which border these great empires, they are really deserts, such the kingdoms of Irimetta, Circassia, and Guriel. These princes with vast territories, rule over a bare fifty thousand subjects. » Egypt is not less deficient than the other countries.
In short, I have reviewed the whole world, and found nothing but decay: I think I see the earth emerging from the ravages of pestilence and famine.
Africa has always been so little known, that one cannot speak of it so precisely as of the other parts of the world; but, dealing only with the Mediterranean shores, which have always been known, it is plain that it has fallen away sadly from what it was under the Carthaginians and the Romans. To-day, its princes are so weak that they are the most* incon- siderable potentates in the world.
After a calculation as exact as may be in the circumstances, I have found that there are upon the earth hardly one-tenth part of the people which there were in ancient times. And the astonishing thing is, {hat the depopulation goes on daily; if it continues, in ten centuries the earth will be a desert.
Here, my dear Usbek, you have the most terrible calamity that can ever happen in the world. But we have scarcely perceived it, because it has stolen upon us gradually in the course of a great many centuries, which denotes an inward defect, a secret and hidden LETTER CXIV poison, a malady decline, afflicting human nature.
Venice, the loth of the moon of Rhcgeb, 1718.
LETTER CXIV Usbek to Rhedi, at Venice The earth, my dear Rhedi, is not incorruptible; even the heavens are not: astrononters are eye-witnesses of their changes, which ai^ the perfectly natural effects of the universal motion of matter.
The earth is subject, like the other planets, to the laws of motion; it suffers within itself a continual strife among its elements; the sea and the land seem to be for ever at war; each moment produces new combinations. « Men, in an abode so subject to change, are likewise in an unsettled condition; a hundred thousand causes may operate against them capable of destroying them, and much more of increasing or diminishing their nuhiber.
I do not refer to those special catastrophes, so common in history, which have destroyed whole cities and kingdoms: there are general ones which many a time have brought the human race next door to destruction.
History is full of those universal plagues which have one after the other desolated the earth. They tell of one which was so violent that it blasted the very roots of plants, and made itself felt throughout the known world, as far as the empire of China; one degree more of corruption would have destroyed, perhaps in a single day, the whole human race.
PERSIAN LETTERS PERSIAN LETTERS It is not two centuries since »the most shameful of all diseases overran Europe, Asia, and Africa; in a very short time it worked terrible havoc; had it continued its progress with unchanging fury, it would have destroyed the race. Burdened with disease from their birth, and incapable of sustaining the duties of society, men would have perished misej'ably.
How would it have been, had the poison possessed a little more strength, as it would cert? inly have done, if, fortunately, there had not been found a remedy as powerful as any jfet discovered! ^ Perhaps that disease, which attacks thfc organs of generation, would have ended by attacking generation itself.
But why do I talk of destruction that might have happened to the whole human race? Has it not already taken place? Did not the Flood reduce mankind to one single family?
There are philosophers who' distinguish two crea- tions: that of things, and that of man. They cannot believe that matter and created things have been in existence only six thousand years; that during all eternity God delayed His works, and only yesterday began to use His creative power. Was it beckusc He could not, or because He would not? But if He could not at one time, neither could He at another. It is then because He would not; but, as time does not exist for God, if it is granted that He willed a ^thing once. He willed it always, and from the begin- ‘hing.
However, all historians speak of a first father: they show us the origin of human nature. Is it not natural to suppose that Adam was saved from some general calamity, as Noah was, from the Flood; and that such great events have been of frequent occur- 1 Mercury.
LETTER CXV rence since the creajtion of the world? But all destructions have not been violent. We see many parts of the earth tired out with providing subsistence for men; how do we know that the whole earth has not within itself general causes of ^ebility, slow- working and imperceptible?
It h^as been a satisfaction to me to give you these general ideas before replying more particularly to your letter on the decrease of mankind which has been going on for seventeen or eighteen centuries. I will show you in a succeeding letter, that moral causes, independently of physical ohes, have produced this effect.
Paris, the 8th of the moon of Chahban, 1718.
LETTER CXV Usbek to the Same You ask from what cause the earth is less populous than it was formerly; if you give the question good heed yoU will see that this great difference is the result of a moral change.
Things are much altered since the Christian and Mohammedan religions divided the Roman world; these two religions have not been nearly so favourable to the propagation of the species as that of those masters of the world.
In it, polygamy was prohibited; and in that respect it had a great advantage over the Mohammedan religion; and it had another, and no less considerable advantage over Christianity in that it permitted divorce.
I find nothing so inconsistent as that plurality of PERSIAN LETTERS wives permitted by the holy Koran, and the command to satisfy them in the same book. “ Visit your wives,” said the Prophet, “ because you are as neces- sary to them as their garments, and they, as necessary to you as yours.” Here is a precept which renders the life of a true Mussulman very laborious. He who has the four wives established by law, and only as many more concubines or slaves, must he not be weighed down by so many garments,?
" Your wives are your tilth,” the Prophet says again; ” devote yourselves therefore to your labour, work for the good of ybur souls; and one day you will have your reward.”
I look upon a good Mussulman as an athlete, destined to strive without respite, but who, soon weakened and overcome by his first toils, languishes even in the field of victory, and finds himself, so to speak, buried under his own triumphs.
Nature always works tardily, and, as it were, thriftily; her o{)erations are never violent; even in her productions she requires temperance; she never works but by rule and measure; if she be hurried she soon falls into decline, and employs all her relnaining strength in self-preservation, losing entirely her pro- ductive faculty and productive power.
It is to this state of debility that we are always reduced by the great number of our wives, fitter to ^exhaust us than to satisfy us. It is quite common among us to see a man in a very large seraglio with but few children; the children themselves are for the most part weak and unhealthy, and share the languor of their father.
This is not all: these women, forced to be con- tinent, require people to guard them, who must neces- sarily be eunuchs; religion, jealousy, reason itself LETTER CXV permit the approaclf of no others; there must be many of these guards, both to maintain peace within doors amid the endless quarrels of the women, and to prevent attempts from without. So that a man who has ten wives or concubines, must-have as many eunuchs to guard them. But what a loss for society in tljis great number of men practically dead from their birth! What depopulation must be the result!
The female slaves, kept in the seraglio to attend along with the eunuchs on this great number of women, almost always grow old thjre in a sorrowful virginity; as long as they are there they cannot marry; and their mistresses, once accustomed to them, hardly ever dismiss them.
You see how many persons of both sexes one man employs in his pleasures, causing them to die to the state, and making them useless for the propagation of the species.
Constantinople and Ispahan are tlie capitals of the ^ two greatest empires of the world; every interest should converge towards them, and people, attracted in a thousand ways, should come to them from aU quarters. And yet these cities are themselves decay- ing, and will soon be destroyed, if their rulers do not cause to repair thither almost every century whole nations to repeople them. I will discuss this subject further in another letter.
Paris, the 13 th of the moon of Chahban, 1718.
R PERSIAN LETTERS LETTER CXVI Usbek to the Same The Romans (Jiid not have fewer slaves than we; they had indeed more, but they made a better use of them.
Far from preventing by violent measures the multiplication of their slaves, they, cn the contrary, favoured it to the best of their ability; they united them in marriages, of a kind, as much as they could; by this means they filletf their houses with servants of both sexes and all ages; and the state with a countless people.
Children which in time became the wealth of a master were born around him without number; he alone was responsible for their upbringing and educa- tion; the fathers, freed from 'that burden, followed only the inclination of nature, and multiplied without the fear of too Id'rge a family.
I have told you that among us all the slaves are employed in guarding our wives, and in nothing else; that with regard to the state they are in a perpetual lethargy; with the result that industry and agri- culture are necessarily confined to a few freemen and heads of families, who apply themselves as little as possible.
It was not thus among the Romans. The republic made use of this nation of slaves to its own great benefit. Each had his own savings, which he owned on conditions imposed by his master; and this hoard he employed in whatever direction his talent lay. One became a banker; another trafficked in cargoes; this one took to retail dealing; that one applied him- self to some industry, or took to farming and culti- LETTER CXVII vated the soil; there jvas not one of them who did not give himself with all his might to increase his savings, securing for himself in the meantime comfort in his present slavery, and the hope of future liberty; this made a diligent people and encouraged arts and industry.
These slaves, enriched by their thrift and toil, bought their freedom and became citizens. The republic was continually built up, and received into its bosom new families, in proportion as the old ones decayed.
In my future letters I •shall perhaps take the opportunity to prove to you that the more men there are in a state, the more prosperous is its commerce; I shall prove as easily, that as commerce flourishes, men increase; these two things necessarily aid and abet each other.
Since that is so, hew much must this enormous number of slaves, always busy, have grown and increased? Industry and plenty produced them; and they on their side produced plenty and industry.
Paris, file i6th ol the moon of Chahban, 1718.
LETTER CXVII Usbek to the Same Hitherto we have discussed only Mohammedan countries, seeking the cause why they are less populous than those which were subject to the government of the Romans; let us now inquire what has produced this effect among the Christians.
PERSIAN LETTERS Divorce, which was permitted* in the Pagan religion, was forbidden by Christianity. This change, which appears at first of such slight importance, produced by degrees consequences so terrible, that one can hardly believe them.
This deprived marriage not only of all its sweetness, but attacked its very aim; the desire to tighten the knot, only loosened it; and instead of uniting hearts, as was pretended, it separated them fpr ever.
Into an action where all should be so free, and in which the heart ought to have so large a share, were introduced constraint, necessity, fate itself. Disgust, caprice, incompatibility of temper were not considered at all; the intention was to fix the heart, that is to say, to fix the most changeable and inconstant thing in nature; people, weary of one another, and almost always badly matched, were joined in an unchang- ing and hopeless vmion, as tyrahts used to unite living men to dead bodies.
Nothing contributed more to a mutual attachment than the power of divorce: husband and wife were induced to endure patiently domestic troubles, know- ing that they had the power to end them; ajid they often retained this power all their lives without using it, from the sole reflection that they were at liberty to do so.
It is not thus with the Christians, as their present ^roubles make them despair of the future. They see only that the discomforts of marriage are lasting, or rather everlasting; hence arise disgust, discord, contempt, and so far a loss to posterity. Three years of marriage are hardly over when its aim is neglected; then follow thirty years of coldness; private separa- tions take place, more enduring, and probably more baneful, than if they had been public; the couple LETTER CXVII lead divided lives, asd all to the prejudice of future generations. A man is soon surfeited with one ever- lasting woman, and betakes himself to harlots, a commerce shameful and opposed to society, which without fulfilling the object of marria|:e, represents at the best only its sensual pleasures.
If,|of two persons thus united, one is not suited to nature’s purpose and the propagation of the species, either constitutionally or on account of age, that party buries the other along with it and renders it as useless as it is itself.
It is not a matter of astonishnjent, then, to see among the Christians so many marriages producing such a small number of citizens. Divorce is abolished; badly assorted marriages cannot be amended; women do not pass as with the Romans through the hands of several husbands, who in turn made the best they could of them.
I dare to say that, in a republic like Lacedaemonia, where the citizens were continuity plagued by peculiar and subtle laws, and in which the state was the only family, if it had been decreed that husbands could change their wives every year, an innumerable people would have been born.
It is very difficult to understand what reason led the Christians to abolish divorce. Marriage among all the nations of the world is a contract susceptible of all kinds of stipulations, and none should be banished from it, except such as would weaken its intention; but the Christians do not look at it in that light, and have taken much trouble to explain their point of view. They make out that marriage does not consist in sensual pleasure; on the contrary, as I have already told you, they seem to wish to exclude that as much as possible; with them it is a symbol, a t3^e, PERSIAN LETTERS PERSIAN LETTERS and something mysterious whfch I do not under- stand, Paris, the igth of the moon of Chahban, 1718.
LETTER CXVIII Usbek to the Same The prohibition of divorce is not the only cause of the depopulation, of Christian countries: the great number of eunuchs which they have among them is another not less important.
I mean those priests and dervishes of both sexes who devote themselves to perpetual continence: this is with the Christians the virtue of virtues; in which I fail to understand them, not perceiving how that can be a virtue which results in nothing.
I find that their learned men distinctly contradict themselves, when they say that marriage is holy, and that celibacy, the opposite of marriage, is holier still; without considering that in matters of teaching and fundamental doctrines, the expedient is always the best.
The number of people professing celibacy is enor- mous. Formerly fathers condemned their children it from the cradle; now they dedicate themselves from the age of fourteen, which amounts to pretty much the same thing.
The practice of continence has destroyed more men than plagues and the most sanguinary wars. In every religious house we see an unending family, where nobody is bom, and which depends for its up- keep upon the rest of the world. These houses are LETTER CXVIII always open, like ao many pits, in which future generations are entombed.
This is a very different policy from that of the Romans, who instituted penal laws against those who rebelled against marriage, and wished to enjoy a liberty so opposed to the public goo3.
I ^am only referring here to Catholic countries. The Protestant religion grants the right of producing children to everybody; it permits neither priests nor dervishes; and if, in the establishment of that religion, which restored everything to an earlier order, its founders had not becn*constantly accused of in- continence, there can be no doubt that, after having made the practice of marriage universal, they would have lightened the yoke still further, and would have ended by removing entirely the barrier which separ- ates, in this particular, the Nazarene and Mohammed.
But however that hnay be, it is certain that their religion gives the Protestants a great advantage over the Catholics.
I dare to say that, in the present state of Europe,' it is not possible for the Catholic religion to exist there for five hundred years.
Before the humiliation of the power of Spain, the Catholics were much stronger than the Protestants. Little by little the latter have arrived at an equality. The Protestants will become richer and more power- ful, and the Catholics will grow weaker.
The Protestant countries ought to be, and are, in fact, more populous than the Catholic ones; from which it follows, firstly, that their revenue is greater, because it increases in proportion to the number of those who pay taxes; secondly, that their lands are better cultivated; lastly, that commerce is more prosperous, because there are more people who have PERSIAN LETTERS fortunes to make; and that, \^th increased wants, there is an increase of resources to supply them. When there are only people enough to cultivate the land, trade must perish; and if there are no more than are necessary to carry on trade, agriculture must go to the wall; that' is to say, both would be ruined at the same time, because devotion to the one can only be at the expense of the other.
As to Catholic countries, not only is agriculture abandoned, but industry itself is mischievous; it consists only in learning five or six words of a dead language. When a man has made this provision for himself, he need hot trouble himself more about his fortune; in the cloister he finds a peaceful life, which would have cost him in the world, care and toil.
This is not all. The dervishes hold in their hands almost all the wealth of the state; they are a miserly crew, always getting, and never giving; they are con- tinually hoarding their income to acquire capital. All this wealth falls as it were into a palsy: it is not 'drculated, it is not employed in trade, in industry, or in manufactures.
There is no Protestant prince who does not levy upon his people much heavier taxes than the Pope draws from his subjects; yet the latter are poor, while the former live in affluence. Commerce puts life into all ranks among the Protestants, and celibacy lays its hand of death upon all interests among the Catholics.
Paris, the 26th of the first moon of Chahban, 1718.
LETTER CXIX LETTER CXIX Usbek to the Same Having nothing further to say of ifsia and Europe, let pass on to Africa. We can really speak of nothing but its shores, as we do not know the interior.
The Barba-y coast, where the Mohammedan religion is established, is not so populous as it was in the times of the Romans, Ifor the reasons I have already given. As to the\iuinea coast, it must be terribly depopulated, since for two hundred years the petty kings or village chiefs have been selling their subjects to the European princes for trans- portation to their American colonies.
A very remarkable thing about this America is, that while it receives 5very year new inhabitants, it is itself a desert, profiting nothing from the continued drain on Africa. Those slaves, trSinsported into a foreign clime, perish there in thousands; and the work in the mines in which natives and foreigners are constantly employed, the poisonous vapours which issue from them, and the quicksilver which is con- tinually in use, destroy them without remedy.
There is nothing more absurd than to cause count- less numbers of men to perish in extracting from the bowels of the earth gold and silver, metals in theqj- selves absolutely useless, and which constitute wealth only because they have been chosen as the symbols of it.
Paris, the last of the moon of Chahban, 1718.
PERSIAN LETTERS LETTER CXX Usbek to the Same The fertility of a people depends sometimes on the most trifling circumstances in the world; so that often nothing more is necessary to increase its numbers than to give a new direction to its imagination.
The Jews, always being exterminated, and always increasing again, have repaired their continual losses and destructions by Ihe single hope, shared by all their families, that from ' one of them shall spring a powerful king who will be the master of the world.
The ancient kings of Persia had such an immense number of subjects, simply because of that dogma of the Magian religion which declares that the deeds of men most acceptable to God are to beget a child, to till a field, and to plant a tree.’
If the population of China is so enormous, it is only the result bf a certain way of thinking; for since children look upon their parents as gods, rever- ence them as such in this life, and honour them after death with sacrifices by means of which they 'believe that their souls, absorbed into Tyen,^ recommence a new existence, each one is bent on increasing a family so dutiful in this life, and so necessary for the next.
On the other hand, the Mohammedan countrie.s become daily more deserted, because of a belief, all- hallowed as it is, which fails not of most baneful effects when it is deeply rooted in the mind. We look upon ourselves as travellers, who ought to think only of another country: useful and lasting works, care to make provision for our children, projects which look beyond our own short and fleeting lives, seem to 1 The heaven of the Chinese.
LETTER CXXI LETTER CXXI us somewhat absurd! Easy minded as regards the present, and without anxiety for the future, we trouble neither to repair public buildings, to reclaim waste lands, nor to cultivate those which are suited for tillage; we live generally in a sta^e of indifference, and allow Providence to do everything.
Itjis a spirit of vanity which established in Europe the unjust law of primogeniture, so unfavourable to propagation in that it fastens the attention of the father upon one of his children, and turns his eyes from all the others, forcing him in order to make a substantial fortune for one to prevent the settlement of several; and lastly, in that it destroys equality among citizens, which constitutes all their wealth.
Paris, the 4th of the moon of Khamazan, 1718.
LETTER CXXI Usbek to the Same Countries inhabited by savages are usually thinly peopled, on account of the dislike which they almost always have for toil and tillage. This unfortunate dislike is so strong, that when they invoke a curse against one of their enemies, they can wish him no greater evil than to be reduced to plough a field, believing that hunting and fishing are the oaly exercises worthy of them.
But, as there are often years in which hunting and fishing are very unproductive, they are desolated by frequent famines; without considering that game and fish are never abundant enough in any country to support a numerous people, because animals always forsake thickly-inhabited districts.
PERSIAN LETTERS Besides, savage hordes, each numbering two or three hundred people, separated from each other, and having interests as divided as those of two empires, cannot maintain themselves, because they have not the resources of^ great states, whose members are all in accord, and work together for each other’s good.
There is another custom not less baneful thap the first; the cruel habit which the women have of pro- curing abortion, in order that their pregnancy may not make them disagreeable to their husbands.
There are dreadful faws against this crime, which are carried to excess. Every unmarried woman who does not declare her pregnancy before a magistrate is punished with death if her offspring dies: ^ shame and modesty, accidents even, are no excuses.
Paris, the 9th of the moon of Rhamazan, 1718.
LETTER CXXII Usbek to the Same The ordinary effect of colonies is to weaken the countries from which they are taken, without peopling those which are colonised.* Men ought to stay where they are; the change from a good climate to a bad one produces diseases, apd others spring from the mere change itself.
The air, like the plants, is loaded with the particles of the soil of each country. It acts upon us in such a way as to fix our constitutions. When we are transported to a foreign country we become ill. The fluids being accustomed to a certain consistency and 1 By an edict of Henry 11., in 1556.
* History proves the contrary.
LETTER CXXII the solids to a cert^ arrangement, and both to a certain degree of motion, cannot put up with others, and resist a new order.
When a country is uninhabited, it is an indication of some particular defect in the nature of the soil or of the atmosphere; so that when men cRe removed from an j^reeable clime to such a country, exactly the opposite of what was intended is done.
The Romans knew this by experience: they banished all their criminals to Sardinia, and sent the Jews there too. They had Iktle difficulty in con- soling themselves for theiii loss, on account of the contempt in which they held these \Vretched creatures.
The great Shah Abbas, wishing to deprive the Turks of the means of supporting large armies on the frontier, transported almost all the Armenians out of their own country, and sent more than twenty thousand families into the province of»Guilan, where they nearly all perished in a very short time.
None of the transportations of people into Con- stantinople has ever succeeded.
The immense numbers of negroes already mentioned have nt)t peopled America.^ Since the destruction of the Jews under Adrian, Palestine has been uninhabited.
It must therefore be admitted that great depopula- tions are almost irreparable, because a people whose numbers are brought down to a certain point, remains there; and if by chance it recovers itself, it mustTe the work of ages.
If, in a state of decay, the least of the circum- stances which I have mentioned comes to pass, a people not only never recovers, but falls off daily and approaches annihilation.
i Montesquieu did not foresee the '* Negro question.”
PERSIAN LETTERS The expulsion of the Moors from Spain is still as much felt as at the time it happened; instead of the void being filled up, it grows greater every day.
Since the devastation of America, the Spaniards, who have taken the place of the ancient inhabitants, have not been dole to repeople it: on the contrciry, by a fatality, which I ought rather to call an instance of Divine justice, the destroyers are destroying tliem- selves, and waste away daily.
Princes ought not therefore to think of peopling large countries by means of colonies. I do not say that they are not sometimes successful; there are climes so favourable, that the human race always multiplies there; witness the isles ^ which have been peopled by some sick folks abandoned by passing vessels, and who soon recovered their health there.
But, if these colonies were to succeed, in place of increasing power, they only divide it; unless they should happen to be of small extent, like those which are occupied for trading purposes.
' The Carthagenians, like the Spaniards, discovered America, or, at any rate, certain large islands with which they carried on an enormous trade; but, when they beheld the number of their inhabitants decreas- ing, that wise republic forbade its subjects to carry on that trade, or to sail to these islands.
I dare affirm that, if in place of sending the Sp^iards into the Indies, the Indians and cross- breeds had been transported to Spain; if its scattered people had been returned to it, and supposing only half of its great colonies had been preserved, Spain would have become the most formidable European power.
An empire may be compared to a tree whose ^ The author probably means the Isle of Bourbon. — (M.)
LETTER CXXII branches, if too widely spread, draw all the sap from the trunk, and are of use only to give shade.
Nothing is fitter to cure in princes the rage for distant conquests than the example of the Portuguese and the Spaniards.
These two nations having conque^d with incon- ceivable rapidity immense kingdoms, more amazed at thiir victories than the conquered peoples at their defeat, considered the means of preserving them, and chose each of them for that purpose a different method.
The Spaniards, despairing to keep the conquered nations faithful to them, 4ook the plan of exter- minating them, and of sending to^pain for dutiful subjects: never was a dreadful design carried out with greater thoroughness. A people, as numerous as all those of Europe together, was seen to disappear from the earth, on the arrival of these barbarians, who, in discovering the Indies, seemed only to have thought of discovering to mankind. the utmost reach of cruelty.
By that barbarity, they held the country under their government. Judge from this what baleful things conquests are, since such are their effects. For, indeed, this horrible expedient was the only one.^ How could they have kept so many millions of men in subjection? How could they have carried on a civil war at such a distance? What would have become of them, had they given these people time to recover from the consternation caused by the advent of these new gods, and from the terrors of their thunders?
As to the Portuguese, they took an entirely opposite course; they did not employ cruelty, and were conse- 1 Not the only one; there is the method by which England has retained India.
PERSIAN LETTERS quently very soon expelled fi;om all the countries which they had discovered. The Dutch favoured the rebellion of their foreign subjects against the Portu- guese, and profited by it.
What prince would envy the lot of these conquerors? Who woiild wish for conquests on these conditions? One nation was soon driven out from its conquests; the other made them into deserts, and made a desert of its own country at the same time., It is the destiny of heroes to ruin themselves by conquering countries Which they suddenly lose, or by subjecting nations which^they themselves are obliged to destroy; like ’’that madman who wasted his sub- stance in buying statues which he cast into the sea, and glasses which he broke as soon as bought.