nd; but the common
people are in a state of servitude to their lords; the exercise of
fraud or rapine is unpunished in a lawless community; and the market is
continually replenished by the abuse of civil and paternal authority.
Such a trade, [74] which reduces the human species to the level of
cattle, may tend to encourage marriage and population, since the
multitude of children enriches their sordid and inhuman parent. But this
source of impure wealth must inevitably poison the national manners,
obliterate the sense of honor and virtue, and almost extinguish the
instincts of nature: the Christians of Georgia and Mingrelia are the
most dissolute of mankind; and their children, who, in a tender age, are
sold into foreign slavery, have already learned to imitate the rapine
of the father and the prostitution of the mother. Yet, amidst the rudest
ignorance, the untaught natives discover a singular dexterity both of
mind and hand; and although the want of union and discipline exposes
them to their more powerful neighbors, a bold and intrepid spirit has
animated the Colchians of every age. In the host of Xerxes, they served
on foot; and their arms were a dagger or a javelin, a wooden casque, and
a buckler of raw hides. But in their own country the use of cavalry has
more generally prevailed: the meanest of the peasants disdained to walk;
the martial nobles are possessed, perhaps, of two hundred horses;
and above five thousand are numbered in the train of the prince of
Mingrelia. The Colchian government has been always a pure and hereditary
kingdom; and the authority of the sovereign is only restrained by the
turbulence of his subjects. Whenever they were obedient, he could lead
a numerous army into the field; but some faith is requisite to believe,
that the single tribe of the Suanians as composed of two hundred
thousand soldiers, or that the population of Mingrelia now amounts to
four millions of inhabitants. [75]

[Footnote 72: A Greek historian, Timosthenes, had affirmed, in eam
ccc. nationes dissimilibus linguis descendere; and the modest Pliny
is content to add, et postea a nostris cxxx. interpretibus negotia ibi
gesta, (vi. 5) But the words nunc deserta cover a multitude of past
fictions.]

[Footnote 73: Buffon (Hist. Nat. tom. iii. p. 433--437) collects the
unanimous suffrage of naturalists and travellers. If, in the time
of Herodotus, they were, (and he had observed them with care,) this
precious fact is an example