much as, added to the loffes of the conqueror, may amount to a million of deaths, and then we shall fee this conqueror, the oldest we have on the records of hiftory, (though, as we have obferved before, the chronology of these remote times is extremely uncertain) opening the scene by a destruction of at least one million of his fpecies, unprovoked but by his ambition, without any motives but pride, cruelty, and madness, and without any benefit to himself; (for Juftin exprefsly tells us he did not maintain his conquefts) but folely to make fo many people, in fo diftant countries, feel experimentally, how fevere a fcourge Providence intends for the human race, when he gives one man the power over many, and arms his naturally impotent, and feeble rage, with the hands of millions, who know no common principle of action, but a blind obedience to the paffions of their ruler.

The next perfonage who figures in the tragedies of this ancient theatre is Semiramis: for we have no particulars of Ninus, but that he made immenfe and rapid conquefts, which doubtless were not compaffed without the ufual carnage. We fee an army of above three millions employed by this martial queen in a war against the Indians. We fee the Indians arming a yet greater; and we behold a war continued with much fury, and with various fuccefs. This ends in the retreat of the queen, with scarce a third of the troops employed

in the expedition; an expedition, which at this rate must have coft two millions of fouls on her part; and it is not unreasonable to judge that the country which was the feat of war, muft have been an equal fufferer. But I am content to detract from this, and to fuppofe that the Indians loft only half fo much, and then the account ftands thus: In this war alone, (for Semiramis had other wars) in this fingle reign, and in this one spot of the globe, did three millions of fouls expire, with all the horrid and shocking circumstances which attend all wars, and in a quarrel, in which none of the fufferers could have the leaft rational concern.

The Babylonian, Affyrian, Median, and Perfian monarchies must have poured out feas of blood in their formation, and in their deftruction. The armies and fleets of Xerxes, their numbers, the glorious ftand made against them, and the unfortunate event of all his mighty preparations, are known to every body. In this expedition, draining half Afia of its inhabitants, he led an army of about two millions to be flaughtered, and wafted, by a thousand fatal accidents, in the fame place where his predeceffors had before by a fimilar madnefs confumed the flower of fo many kingdoms, and wafted the force of fo extenfive 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 fubjects, to

fay

You

fay nothing of its other wars, and the loffes fuftained in them. These were their loffes abroad; but the war was brought home to them, firft by Agefilaus, and afterwards, by Alexander. I have not, in this retreat, the books neceffary to make very exact calculations; nor is it neceffary to give more than hints to one of your Lordship's erudition. You will recollect his uninterrupted feries of fuccefs. You will run over his battles. will call to mind the carnage which was made. You will give a glance of the whole, and you will agree with me; that to form this hero no lefs than twelve hundred thoufand lives muft have been facrificed; but no fooner had he fallen himself a facrifice to his vices, than a thousand breaches were made for ruin to enter, and give the laft hand to this fcene of mifery and deftruction. His kingdom was rent and divided; which ferved to employ the more diftinct parts to tear each other to pieces, and bury the whole in blood and flaughter. The kings of Syria and of Egypt, the kings of Pergamus and Macedon, without intermiffion worried each other for above two hundred years; until at last a strong power arifing in the weft, rushed in upon them and filenced their tumults, by involving all the contending parties in the fame deftruction. It is little to say, that the contentions between the fucceffors of Alexander depopulated that part of the world of at leaft two millions.

The ftruggle between the Macedonians and Greeks, and before that, the difputes of the Greek commonwealths among themfelves, for an unprofitable fuperiority, form one of the bloodiest scenes in hiftory. One is aftonished how fuch a small fpot could furnish men fufficient to facrifice to the pitiful ambition of poffeffing five or fix thousand more acres, or two or three more villages: yet to fee the acrimony and bitterness with which this was difputed between the Athenians and Lacedemonians; what armies cut off; what fleets funk, and burnt; what a number of cities facked, and their inhabitants flaughtered, and captived; one would be induced to believe the decifion of the fate of mankind at leaft, depended upon it! But thefe difputes ended as all fuch ever have done, and ever will do; in a real weakness of all parties ; a momentary fhadow, and dream of power in fome one; and the subjection of all to the yoke of a ftranger, who knows how to profit of their divifions. This at leaft was the cafe of the Greeks; and fure, from the earliest accounts of them, to their abforption into the Roman empire, we cannot judge that their inteftine divifions, and their foreign wars, confumed lefs than three millions of their inhabitants.

What an Aceldama, what a field of blood Sicily has been in ancient times, whilft the mode of its government was controverted between the republican

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lican and tyrannical parties, and the poffeffion ftruggled for by the natives, the Greeks, the Carthaginians, and the Romans, your Lordship will eafily recollect. You will remember the total deftruction of fuch 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, rebellions, maffacres, affaffinations, profcriptions, and a series of horrour beyond the hiftories perhaps of any other nation in the world: though the hiftories of all nations are made up of fimilar matter. I once more excufe myself in point of exactness for want of books. But I fhall eftimate the flaughters in this ifland but at two millions; which your Lordship will find much short of the reality.

Let us pafs by the wars, and the confequences of them, which wafted Grecia-Magna, before the Roman power prevailed in that part of Italy. They are perhaps exaggerated; therefore I fhall only rate them at one million. Let us haften to open that great fcene 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 ftates teemed for new deftruction: the Sabines, the Samnites, the Equi, the Volfci, the Hetrurians, were broken by a series of flaughters which had no interruption, for fome hundreds of years; flaughters which upon