so extensive an empire. It is a cheap calculation to say, that the Perfian empire in its wars, against the Greeks and Scythians, threw away at least four millions of its subjects, to say nothing of its other wars, and the losses sustained in them. These were their losses abroad; but the war, was brought home to them, first by Agefilaus, and afterwards, by Alexander. I have not the books necessary to make very exact calculations; but you will agree with me, that to form this hero no less than twelve hundred thousand lives must have been sacrificed; but no sooner had he fallen himself a sacrifice to his vices, than a thousand breaches were made for ruin to enter, and give the last hand to this scene of misery and destruction. His kingdom was rent and divided; which served to employ the more distinct parts to tear each other to pieces and bury the whole in blood and slaughter. The kings of Syria and of Egypt, the kings of Pergamus and Macedon, without intermission worried each other for above two hundred years; until at last a strong power arising in the west, rushed in upon them and silenced their tumults by involving all the contending parties in the same destruction. It is little to say, that the contention between the successors of Alexander depopulated that part of the world of at least two millions.

The struggle between the Macedonians and Greeks, and before that, the disputes of the Greek commonwealths among themselves, for an unprofitable superiority, form one of the bloodi

bloodiest scenes in history. One is astonished how such a small spot could furnish men suffici ent to sacrifice to the pitiful ambition of possessing five or six thousand more acres, or two or three more villages. Yet to see the acrimony and bitterness with which this was disputed between the Athenians and Lacedæmonians; what armies cut off; what fleets sunk, and burnt; what a number of cities sacked, and their inhabitants slaughtered, and captivated; one would be induced to believe the decision of the fate of mankind at least depended upon it! But these disputes ended as all such ever have done, and ever will do; in a real weakness of all parties; a momentary shadow, and dream of power in some one; and the subjection of all to the yoke of a stranger, who knows how to profit of their divisions. This at least was the case of the Greeks; and sure from the earliest accounts of them in their absorption into the Roman empire, we cannot judge that their intestine divisions, and their foreign wars, consumed less than three millions of their inhabitants.

What an Aceldama, what a FIELD OF BLOOD Sicily has been in ancient times, whilst the mode of its government was controverted between the republican and tyrannical parties, and the possession struggled for by the natives, the Greeks, the Carthagenians, and the Romans.

You will remember the total destruction of such bodies as an army of 300,000 men. You will find every page of its history dyed in blood, and blotted and confounded by tumults, rebel

lions, massacres, assassinations, proscriptions, and a series of horror beyond the histories perhaps of any other nation in the world; though the histories of all nations are made up of fimilar matter. I once more excuse myself in point of exactness for want of books. But I shall estimate the slaughters in this island but at two millions; which your lordship will find much short of the reality..

Let us pass by the wars, and the consequences of them, which wasted Grecia-Magna, before the Roman power prevailed in that part of Italy. They are perhaps exaggerated; therefore I shall only rate them at one million. Let us hasten to open that great scene which establishes the Roman empire, and forms the grand catastrophe of the ancient drama. This empire, whilst in its infancy, began by an effusion of human blood scarcely credible. The neighbouring little states teemed for new destruction the Sabines, the Samnites, the Æqui, the Volsci, the Hetrurians, were broken by a series of slaughter, which had no interruption for some hundreds of years; slaughter which upon all sides consumed more than two millions of the wretched people. The Gauls rushed into Italy about this time, andadded the total destruction of their own armies to those of the ancient inhabitants. In short, it were hardly possible to conceive a more horrid and bloody picture, if that which the Punic wars, that ensued soon af-2 ter, did not present one, that far exceeds it. Here we find that Climax of devastation, and

ruin, which seemed to shake the whole earth. The extent of this war which vexed so many nations, and both elements, and the havock in the human species caused in both, really astonishes beyond expression when it is nakedly considered, and those matters which are apt to divert our attention from it, the characters, actions, and designs of the persons concerned, are not taken into the accompt.

These wars, I mean those called the Punic wars, could not have stood the human race in less than three millions of the species. And yet this forms but a part only, and a very small 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 massacre. In that war Sylla destroyed 300,000 men at Cheronea. He defeated Mithridates' army under Dorilaus, and slew 300,000. This great and unfortunate prince lost another 300,000 before Cyzicum. In the course of the war he had innumerable other losses; and having many intervals of success, he revenged them severely. He was at last 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 shared the same 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 slaughter, turned its edge upon the bowels of the Roman republic itself; and

presented a scene of cruelties and treasons enough almost to obliterate the memory of all the external devastations.

I intended to have proceeded in a sort of method, in estimating the numbers of mankind cut off in these wars which we have on record. But I am obliged to alter my design. Such a tragical uniformity of havock and murder would disgust and I confess I already feel my eyes ake by keeping them so long intent on so bloody a prospect.

I shall observe little on the Servile, the Social, the Gallic, 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 Cæsar alone, are calculated by somebody 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 serve as a standard, by which to measure, in some degree, the others; you will turn your eyes on Judea; a very inconsiderable spot of the earth in itself, though ennobled by the singular events which had their rise in that country.

This spot happened, it matters not here by what means, to become at several times extremely populous, and to supply men slaughters scarcely credible, if other well known and well attested ones had not given them a colour, The first settling of the Jews here, was attended with an almost entire extirpation of all the former inhabitants. Their own civil wars, and those

H3