chiefs or sovereigns) is at no sort of expense
in preparing him for the field; and when he
is in it, the chance of plunder is the only pay
which he either expects or requires.
An army of hunters can seldom exceed two
or three hundred men. The precarious subsistence
which the chace affords, could seldom
allow a greater number to keep together for
any considerable time. An army of shepherds,
on the contrary, may sometimes amount
to two or three hundred thousand. As long
as nothing stops their progress, as long as they
can go on from one district, of which they
have consumed the forage, to another, which
is yet entire; there seems to be scarce any
limit to the number who can march on together.
A nation of hunters can never be
formidable to the civilized nations in their
neighbourhood; a nation of shepherds may.
Nothing can be more contemptible than an
Indian war in North America; nothing, on
the contrary, can be more dreadful than a
Tartar invasion has frequently been in Asia.
The judgement of Thucydides, that both Europe
and Asia could not resist the Scythians
united, has been verified by the experience of
all ages. The inhabitants of the extensive,
but defenceles plains of Scythia or Tartary,
have been frequently united under the dominion
of the chief of some conquering horde
or clan; and the havock and devastation of
Asia have always signalized their union. The
inhabitants of the inhospitable deserts of
Arabia, the other great nation of shepherds,
have never been united but once, under Mahomet
and his immediate successors. Their
union, which was more the effect of religious
enthusiasm than of conquest, was signalized
in the same manner. If the hunting nations
of America should ever become shepherds,
their neighbourhood would be much more
dangerous to the European colonies than it is
at present.
In a yet more advanced state of society,
among those nations of husbandmen who have
little foreign commerce, and no other manufactures
but those coarse and household ones,
which almost every private family prepares
for its own use, every man, in the same
manner, either is a warrior, or easily becomes
such. Those who live by agriculture generally
pass the whole day in the open air, exposed
to all the inclemencies of the seasons.
The hardiness of their ordinary life prepares
them for the fatigues of war, to some of which
their necessary occupations bear a great analogy.
The necessary occupation of a ditcher
prepares him to work in the trenches, and to
fortify a camp, as well as to inclose a field.
The ordinary pastimes of such husbandmen
are the same as those of shepherds, and are in
the same manner the images of war. But as
husbandmen have less leisure than shepherds,
they are not so frequently employed in those
pastimes. They are soldiers, but soldiers not
quite so much masters of their exercise. Such
as they are, however, it seldom costs the sovereign
or commonwealth any expense to prepare
them for the field.
Agriculture, even in its rudest and lowest
state, supposes a settlement, some sort of fixed
habitation, which cannot be abandoned
without great loss. When a nation of mere
husbandmen, therefore, goes to war, the whole
people cannot take the field together. The
old men, the women and children, at least,
must remain at home, to take care of the habitation.
All the men of the military age,
however, may take the field, and in small nations
of this kind, have frequently done so.
In every nation, the men of the military age
are supposed to amount to about a fourth or
a fifth part of the whole body of the people.
If the campaign, too, should begin after seed-time,
and end before harvest, both the husbandman
and his principal labourers can be
spared from the farm without much loss. He
trusts that the work which must be done in
the mean time, can be well enough executed
by the old men, the women, and the children.
He is not unwilling, therefore, to serve without
pay during a short campaign; and it frequently
costs the sovereign or commonwealth
as little to maintain him in the field as to prepare
him for it. The citizens of all the different
states of ancient Greece seem to have
served in this manner till after the second
Persian war; and the people of Peloponnesus
till after the Peloponnesian war. The
Peloponnesians, Thucydides observes, generally
left the field in the summer, and returned
home to reap the harvest. The Roman
people, under their kings, and during the first
ages of the republic, served in the same manner.
It was not till the siege of Veii, that
they who staid at home began to contribute
something towards maintaining those who
went to war. In the European monarchies,
which were founded upon the ruins of the
Roman empire, both before, and for some
time after, the establishment of what is properly
called the feudal law, the great lords,
with all their immediate dependents, used to
serve the crown at their own expense. In
the field, in the same manner as at home,
they maintained themselves by their own revenue,
and not by any stipend or pay which
they received from the king upon that particular
occasion.
In a more advanced state of society, two
different causes contribute to render it altogether
impossible that they who take the field
should maintain themselves at their own expense.
Those two causes are, the progress of
manufactures, and the improvement in the art
of war.
Though a husbandman should be employed
in an expedition, provided it begins after seed-time,
and ends before harvest, the interruption
of his business will not always occasion any