distinguished for politeness than for industry) amounts to 112,591. See
an excellent tract of M. Muret, in the Memoires de la Societe de Born.]

[Footnote 37: Paul Diaconus, c. 1, 2, 3. Machiavel, Davila, and the rest
of Paul's followers, represent these emigrations too much as regular and
concerted measures.]

[Footnote 38: Sir William Temple and Montesquieu have indulged, on this
subject, the usual liveliness of their fancy.]

[Footnote 39: Machiavel, Hist. di Firenze, l. i. Mariana, Hist. Hispan.
l. v. c. 1]

[Footnote 40: Robertson's Charles V. Hume's Political Essays. Note: It
is a wise observation of Malthus, that these nations "were not populous
in proportion to the land they occupied, but to the food they produced."
They were prolific from their pure morals and constitutions, but their
institutions were not calculated to produce food for those whom they
brought into being.--M--1845.]

A warlike nation like the Germans, without either cities, letters, arts,
or money, found some compensation for this savage state in the enjoyment
of liberty. Their poverty secured their freedom, since our desires
and our possessions are the strongest fetters of despotism. "Among the
Suiones (says Tacitus) riches are held in honor. They are therefore
subject to an absolute monarch, who, instead of intrusting his people
with the free use of arms, as is practised in the rest of Germany,
commits them to the safe custody, not of a citizen, or even of a
freedman, but of a slave. The neighbors of the Suiones, the Sitones,
are sunk even below servitude; they obey a woman." [41] In the mention
of these exceptions, the great historian sufficiently acknowledges the
general theory of government. We are only at a loss to conceive by what
means riches and despotism could penetrate into a remote corner of
the North, and extinguish the generous flame that blazed with such
fierceness on the frontier of the Roman provinces, or how the ancestors
of those Danes and Norwegians, so distinguished in latter ages by their
unconquered spirit, could thus tamely resign the great character of
German liberty. [42] Some tribes, however, on the coast of the Baltic,
acknowledged the authority of kings, though without relinquishing the
rights of men, [43] but in the far greater part of Germany, the form of
government was a democracy, tempered, indeed, and controlled, not so
much by general and positive laws, as by the occasional ascendant of
birth or valor, of