Here we find that

all fides confumed more than two millions of the wretched people. The Gauls rushing into Italy about this time, added the total destruction of their own armies to those of the antient inhabitants. In short, it were hardly poffible to conceive a more horrid and bloody picture, if that the Punick wars that ensued soon after did not prefent one, that far exceeds it. climax of devastation, and ruin, which seemed to fhake the whole earth. The extent of this war which vexed fo many nations, and both elements, and the havock of the human species caused in both, really astonishes beyond expreffion, when it is nakedly confidered, and those matters which are apt to divert our attention from it, the characters, actions, and designs of the perfons concerned, are not taken into the account. Thefe wars, I mean those called the Punick wars, could not have stood the human race in less than three millions of the fpecies. And yet this forms but a part only, and a very fmall part, of the havock caused by the Roman ambition. The war with Mithridates was very little less bloody; that prince cut off at one stroke 150,000 Romans by a maffacre. In that war Sylla deftroyed 300,000 men at Cheronea. He defeated Mithridates' army under Dorilaus, and flew 300,000. This great and unfortunate prince loft another 300,000 before Cyzicum. In the courfe of the war he had innumerable other loffes; and

having many intervals of fuccefs, he revenged them severely. He was at laft totally overthrown; and he crushed to pieces the king of Armenia his ally by the greatness of his ruin. All who had connexions with him fhared the fame fate. The merciless genius of Sylla had its full scope; and the streets of Athens were not the only ones which ran with blood. At this period, the sword, glutted with foreign flaughter, turned its edge upon the bowels of the Roman republick itself; and prefented a scene of cruelties and treasons enough almost to obliterate the memory of all the external devastations. I intended, my Lord, to have proceeded in a fort of method in eftimating the numbers of mankind cut off in these wars which we have on record. But I am obliged to alter my defign. Such a tragical uniformity of havock and murder would difguft your Lordship as much as it would me; and I confefs I already feel my eyes ake by keeping them fo long intent on fo bloody a profpect. I fhall obferve little on the Servile, the Social, the Gallick, and Spanish wars; nor upon those with Jugurtha, nor Antiochus, nor many others equally important, and carried on with equal fury. The butcheries of Julius Cæfar alone, are calculated by fomebody else; the numbers he has been a means of destroying have been reckoned at 1,200,000. But to give your Lordship an idea that may ferve as a ftand

ard,

ard, by which to measure, in fome degree, the others; you will turn your eyes on Judea; a very inconfiderable spot of the earth in itself, though ennobled by the fingular events which had their rife in that country.

This fpot happened, it matters not here by what means, to become at several times extremely populous, and to fupply men for flaughters scarcely credible, if other well-known and well-attefted ones had not given them a colour. The firft fettling of the Jews here, was attended by an almoft entire extirpation of all the former inhabitants. Their own civil wars, and those with their petty neighbours, confumed vast multitudes almost every year for feveral centuries; and the irruptions of the kings of Babylon and Affyria made immenfe ravages. Yet we have their history but partially, in an indiftinct confufed manner; fo that I fhall only throw the strong point of light upon that part which coincides with Roman history, and of that part only on the point of time when they received the great and final stroke which made them no more a nation; a ftroke which is allowed to have cut off little lefs than two millions of that people. I fay nothing of the loppings made from that stock whilft it ftood; nor from the fuckers that grew out of the old root ever fince. But if in this inconfiderable part of the globe, fuch a carnage has been made in two or three short reigns,

and

and that this great carnage, great as it is, makes but a minute part of what the histories of that people inform us they fuffered; what fhall we judge of countries more extended, and which have waged wars by far more confiderable?

Inftances of this fort compofe the uniform of history. But there have been periods when no less than univerfal deftruction to the race of mankind feems to have been threatened. Such was that, when the Goths, the Vandals, and the Huns poured into Gaul, Italy, Spain, Greece, and Africa, carrying destruction before them as they advanced, and leaving horrid defarts every way behind them. Vaftum ubique filentium, fecreti colles; fumantia procul tecta; nemo exploratoribus obvius, is what Tacitus calls facies victoria. It is always fo; but was here emphatically fo. From the north proceeded the fwarms of Goths, Vandals, Huns, Oftrogoths, who ran towards the fouth into Africa itself, which fuffered as all to the north had done. About this time, another torrent of barbarians, animated by the fame fury, and encouraged by the fame fuccefs, poured out of the fouth, and ravaged all to the north-east and weft, to the remoteft parts of Perfia on one hand, and to the banks of the Loire or further on the other; deftroying all the proud and curious monuments of human art, that not even the memory might seem to furvive of the former inhabitants. What has been done fince,

and

and what will continue to be done while the fame inducements to war continue, I fhall not dwell upon. I fhall only in one word mention the horrid effects of bigotry and avarice, in the conqueft of Spanish America; a conqueft on a low eftimation effected by the murder of ten millions of the fpecies. I fhall draw to a conclufion of this part, by making a general calculation of the whole. I think I have actually mentioned above thirty-fix millions. I have not particularized any more. I don't pretend to exactness; therefore, for the fake of a general view, I fhall lay together all those actually flain in battles, or who have perished in a no lefs miferable manner by the other deftructive confequences of war from the beginning of the world to this day, in the four parts of it, at a thousand times as much; no exaggerated calculation, allowing for time and extent. We have not perhaps fpoke of the five-hundredth part; I am fure I have not of what is actually afcertained in hiftory; but how much of thefe butcheries are only expreffed in generals, what part of time hiftory has never reached, and what vaft fpaces of the habitable globe it has not embraced, I need not mention to your Lordship. I need not enlarge on those torrents of filent and inglorious blood which have glutted the thirfty fands of Africk, or difcoloured the polar fnow, or fed the favage forefts of America for fo many ages of con