At a very early period of my life, my brother, who, in a most examplary manner, maintained and educated the family his father left, made me keep a register of a thermometer, expressing the variations by lines on a divided scale. He taught me to know, that, whatever can be expressed in numbers, may be represented by lines. The Chart of the thermometer was on the same principle with those given here; the application only is different. The brother to whom I owe this, now fills the Natural Philosophy Chair in the University of Edinburgh_. [end of page #xvi] CONTENTS. ---o0o--- Page. =BOOK I.= CHAP. I. INTRODUCTION and plan of the work.--Explanation of what the author understands by wealthy and powerful nations, and of the general cause of wealth and power......1 CHAP. II. Of the general causes that operate, both externally and internally, in bringing down nations that have risen above their level to that assigned to them by their extent, fertility, and population; and of the manner in which wealth destroyed power in ancient nations...............14 CHAP. III. Of the nations that rose to wealth and power previous to the conquests in Asia and Africa, and the causes which ruined them...............20 CHAP. IV. Of the Romans.--The causes of their rise under the republic, and of their decline under the emperors.--The great error generally fallen into with respect to the comparison between Rome and Carthage; proofs that it is wrong, and not at all applicable to France and England................27 CHAP. V. Of the cities and nations that rose to wealth and power in the middle ages, after the fall of the Western Empire, and previous to the discovery of the passage to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope, and of America.--Different effects of wealth on nations in cold and in warm climates, and of the fall of the Eastern Empire..............44 [end of page #xvii] CHAP. VI. Digression concerning the commerce with India.--This the only one that raised ancient nations to wealth.--Its continual variations.--The envy it excited, and revolutions it produced....................51 CHAP. VII. Of the causes that brought on the decline of the nations that had flourished in the middle ages, and of Portugal, Spain, Holland, and the Hans Towns..........62 CHAP. VIII. General view and analysis of the causes that operated in producing the decline of all nations, with a chart, representing the rise, fall, and migrations of wealth, in all different countries, from the year 1500, before the birth of Christ, to the end of the eighteenth century,--a period of 3300 years...............70 =BOOK II.= CHAP. I. Of the interior causes of decline, arising from the possession of wealth.--Its general operation on the habits of life, manners, education, and ways of thinking and acting of the inhabitants of a country................81 CHAP. II.