LETTER CXXI. Usbek to the Same.

THE ordinary effect of colonies is the weakening of the countries from which they are drawn, without peopling that to which they are removed. Men ought to remain where they are: there are disorders contracted by changing a good for a bad air; and others which come from changing at all. The air, like plants, is charged with the particles of each country. It so acts upon us, that our constitution is fixed by it. When we are removed into another country we grow sick. The fluids being accustomed to a certain consistency, the solids to a certain habit, and both to a certain degree of motion, cannot admit of others, and resist a new habit. When a country is a desert, it is a sign that there is some particular bad quality in the nature of the earth or climate: so that when we take men from a happy climate, to send them into such a country, we act directly contrary to the end we designed. The Romans knew this by experience; they banished all their criminals into Sardinia, and made the Jews go there too. They were obliged to be contented with their loss; which the contempt they had for those wretches made very easy to them. The great Cha-Abbas, inclined to deprive the Turks of the means of supporting great armies upon his frontiers, transported almost all the Armenians out of their own country, and sent more than twenty thousand families into the province of Guilan, who almost all perished in a little time. All the removals of people to Constantinople have never succeeded, the vast numbers of Negroes, whom we have already mentioned, have not filled America. From the destruction of the Jews, under Adrian, Palestine hath been uninhabited. It must then be allowed

that great depopulations are scarcely to be repaired; because a people reduced to a certain degree, continue in the same state: and if, by chance they are re-established, it must be the work of whole ages. But if, in a state of decay, the least of the circumstances already mentioned, happens to occur, it not only can never repair itself, but decays every day, and approaches to its utter destruction. The expulsion of the Moors out of Spain is now as much felt as at the first day: so far is that vacancy from being filled up, that it becomes greater every day. Since the devastation of America the Spaniards, who have taken place of its ancient inhabitants, have not been able to re-people it: on the contrary, by a fatality, which I might better call the divine justice, the destroyers destroy themselves, and daily consume away. Princes therefore must not think of peopling large countries by colonies. I do not say they never succeed: there are some climates so very favourable, that the inhabitants multiply there continually, witness those islands The author perhaps means the island of Bourbon. ^†350 which were peopled by some distempered people whom some ships left there, and where they soon recovered their health. But though such colonies should always succeed, instead of increasing the power, they only divide it; unless they are but of small extent; as those are, where they send some to inhabit a place for the convenience of trade. The Carthaginians, as well as the Spaniards, discovered America, at least some large islands in which they carried on a very great trade: but when they found the number of their inhabitants decreased, this wife republic forbid their subjects that trade and navigation. I may venture to say, that instead of sending Spaniards into the Indies, they ought to make all the Indians and all the Metifs remove into Spain: and if only half of those great colonies were preserved, Spain would become the most formidable power in Europe. We may compare empires to a tree, whose branches if extended too far, draw all the sap from the trunk, and serve only for a shade. Nothing is properer to cure the arduous desire in princes of making distant conquests, than the examples of the Portugueze and Spaniards. These two nations having conquered, with inconceivable rapidity, immense kingdoms, more astonished at their own victories, than the conquered people were at their own defeat, considered of the means to preserve them, and took each for that end a different way. The Spaniards, despairing of keeping the conquered nations in subjection, determined to exterminate them, and send thither more loyal people from Spain; never horrible design was more punctually executed. A people as numerous as all those of Europe together, were cut off from the earth, at the arrival of these barbarians, who seemed, in discovering the Indies, to have thought only of discovering to mankind the utmost reach of cruelty. By this barbarity they kept the country under their government. Judge by this what fatal things conquests are, since the effects are such as these: for, in short, this terrible expedient was the only one. How was it possible they could have kept so many millions of men in their obedience? How could they have supported a civil war at such a distance? What would have become of them, if they had given time to those people to have recovered from the consternation they were in at the arrival of these new gods, and at the terror of their thunder? As to the Portuguese, they took a quite contrary method; they did not make use of cruelties: therefore they were soon drove out of all the countries they had discovered. The Dutch favoured the rebellion of those nations, and profited themselves by it. What prince would envy the lot of these conquerors? Who would enjoy these conquests upon such conditions? The one were soon driven out, the others made nothing but deserts, and rendered their own countries the same. It is the fate of heroes to ruin themselves by conquering of countries which they suddenly lose again, or by subduing of nations which they themselves are obliged to destroy; like that madman who ruined himself by buying statues which he threw into the sea, and glasses which he broke as soon as he had purchased them.

Paris, the 18th of the moon Rhamazan,
1718.