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the ancient practice for all that held lands in a kingdom, to go to war when occasion required. He says, likewise, that there were three other orders of men in the kingdom, husbandmen, shepherds, and artificers; but these were not, strictly speaking, citizens of the kingdom, but servants or tenants, or workmen to those who were the owners of the lands and cattle. Mizraim led his followers into Egypt, it is most probable that many considerable persons joined their families and went with him; and these families being in dependent, until they agreed upon a coalition for their common advantage, it is natural to think, that they agreed upon a plan which might gratify every family, and its descendants, with a suitable property, which they might improve as their own. Herodotus gives an account of the Egyptian polity; where he says, that the Egyptians were divided into seven orders of men ; but he takes in the tillers of the ground or husbandmen, the artificers, and the shepherds, who were at first only servants employed by the masters of the families to whom they belonged, and not free subjects of the kingdom; and adds an order of seamen, which must be of later date. Herodotus' account might perhaps be true respecting their constitution, in times much later than those of which I am treating. There is one thing very remarkable in the first polity of kingdoms; namely, that the legislators paid a surprizing deference to the paternal authority, or jurisdiction which fathers were thought to have over their children; and were

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extremely cautious how they made any state-laws which might affect it. When Romulus had framed the Roman constitution, he did not attempt to limit the powers, which parents were thought to have over their children; so that, as Dionysius of Halicarnassus observes, a father had full power, either to imprison, or enslave, or to sell, or to inflict the severest corporal punishments upon, or to kill his son; even though the son at that very time was in the highest employments of the state, and bore his office with the greatest public applause. And when Numa attempted to limit this extravagant power, he carried his limitation no further, than to appoint, that a son, if married with his father's consent, should in some measure be freed from so unlimited a subjection.

The first legislators cannot be supposed to have attempted any other improvements of their country, than what would naturally arise from agriculture, pasturage, and planting; for traffic began in after-ages. Hence it soon appeared, that in fertile and open countries, they had abundance of people more than they could employ; for few hands would quickly learn to produce a maintenance for more than was necessary for the tillage of the ground, or the care of the cattle. But in mountainous and woody countries, where fruitful and open plains were rarely met with, men multiplyed faster than they could be maintained. Hence it came to pass, that these countries commonly sent forth frequent colonies and plantations; when their inhabitants

d Dionys. Halicar. lib. 2. c. 26, 27.

were so numerous, that their land could not bear them, i, e. could not produce a sufficient maintenance for them. But in more fruitful nations, where greater multitudes could be supported; the kings had at their command great bodies of men, and employed them either in raising prodigious buildings, or formed them into powerful armies. Thus in Egypt they built pyramids, at Babylon they encompassed the city with walls of an incredible height and thickness; and they conquered and brought into subjection all the nations round about them.

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The first kings laid no sort of tax upon their subjects, to maintain either soldiers or servants; for all the tribute they took was from strangers, and their own people were free. But they had in every country larger portions of land than their subjects, and whenever they conquered foreign kingdoms, they encreased their revenue by laying an annual tribute or tax upon them. Ninus was the first king who took this course; he over-ran all his neighbours with his armies, and obliged them to buy their peace by paying yearly such tribute as he thought fit to exact from them. The conquered nations, however free the subjects of them were at home, with regard to their own king, were yet justly said to be under the yoke of foreign. servitude, and were looked upon by the king who had conquered them, as larger farms to yield him such an annual product, as he thought fit to set upom them; and the king and all the people of them, though they

Justin. lib. 1. c. 1.

f

were commonly permitted to live according to their own laws, were yet reputed the conqueror's servants. Thus the kings of Canaan, when they became tributary, were said to serve Chedorlaomer; and thus Xerxes, when Pythius the Lydian, presuming upon his being in great favour with the king, ventured to petition to have one of his sons excused from following the army, remonstrated to him, that he was his servant. The Persians are frequently called by Cyrus in Xenophon Ανδρες Περσαι, or men of Persia, Φίλοι, the king's friends; and Xerxes keeps up in his answer to Pythius the same distinction; when he mentions that his children, his relations, his domestics, and then his natural subjects, whom he calls his qλes, went with him to the war. And dare you, says he, who are my servant, quos doλ, talk of your son? Lydia was a conquered kingdom; and so Pythius and all the Lydians were the king's property, to do with them as he thought fit. And they sometimes used those they had conquered, accordingly, removing them out of one nation into another as they pleased. But I think that the extravagances of ambitious conquerors is not so 'much to be wondered at, as the politics of Aristotle, who has laid down such principles, as, if true, would justify all the wars and bloodshed that an ambitious prince can be guilty of. He mentions war as one of the natural ways of getting an estate; for he says, "It is a sort of hunting, which is to be made use of against the wild beasts, and against those men, who, born by

Gen. xiv. 4.

Herodot. lib. 7. c. 99.

nature for servitude, will not submit to it; so that a war upon these is naturally just." h

Diodorus Siculus remarks, that it was not the ancient custom for sons to succeed their fathers, and inherit their crowns. This observation was fact in many kingdoms; but then it could be only where kingdoms were not raised upon paternal or despotic authority. Where paternal authority took place, the kingdom would of course descend as that did; and the eldest son become at his father's death the ruler over his father's children. Where kingdoms arose from masters and their servants, the right heir of the substance would be the right heir to the crown; which we find was the Persian constitution. The subjects, having originally been servants, did not apprehend that they had any right or pretence ever to become kings'; but that the crown was always to be given to one of royal blood.* But in kingdoms, which were founded by a number of families, uniting together by agreement to form a civil society, the subjects upon every vacancy chose a king as they thought fit; and the personal qualifications of the person to be elected, and not his birth, procured his election. Many instances of this might be produced from the ancient kingdoms of Greece; and very convincing ones from the first Roman kings, of whom Plutarch observes that none of them was succeeded in his kingdom by his son; and Florus has remarked of

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Brissonius de Regno Persarum, lib. 1.

Plutarch. lib. de Animi Tranquillitate, p. 467.

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