I. First, then, as to that memorable act by which Constantinople (_i.e._ the Eastern empire) connected herself for ever with Christianity; viz. the recognition of pauperism as an element in the state entitled to the maternal guardianship of the state. In this new principle, introduced by Christianity, we behold a far-seeing or proleptic wisdom, making provision for evils before they had arisen; for it is certain that great expansions of pauperism did not exist in the ancient world. A pauper population is a disease peculiar to the modern or Christian world. Various causes latent in the social systems of the ancients prevented such developments of surplus people. But does not this argue a superiority in the social arrangements of these ancients? Not at all; they were atrociously worse. They evaded this one morbid affection by means of others far more injurious to the moral advance of man. The case was then every where as at this day it is in Persia. A Persian ambassador to London or Paris might boast that, in his native Iran no such spectacles existed of hunger-bitten myriads as may be seen every where during seasons of distress in the crowded cities of Christian Europe. "No," would be the answer, "most certainly not; but why? The reason is, that your accursed form of society and government _intercepts_ such surplus people, does not suffer them to be born. What is the result? You ought, in Persia, to have three hundred millions of people; your vast territory is easily capacious of that number. You _have_--how many have you? Something less than eight millions." Think of this, startled reader. But, if _that_ be a good state of things, then any barbarous soldier who makes a wilderness, is entitled to call himself a great philosopher and public benefactor. This is to cure the headache by amputating the head. Now, the same principle of limitation to population _a parte ante_, though not in the same savage excess as in Mahometan Persia, operated upon Greece and Rome. The whole Pagan world escaped the evils of a redundant population by vicious repressions of it beforehand. But under Christianity a new state of things was destined to take effect. Many protections and excitements to population were laid in the framework of this new religion, which, by its new code of rules and impulses, in so many ways extended the free-agency of human beings. Manufacturing industry was destined first to arise on any great scale under Christianity. Except in Tyre and Alexandria, (see the Emperor Hadrian's account of this last,) there was no town or district in the ancient world where the populace could be said properly to work. The rural labourers worked a little--not much; and sailors worked a little; nobody else worked at all. Even slaves had little more work distributed amongst each ten than now settles upon one. And in many other ways, by protecting the principle of life, as a mysterious sanctity, Christianity has favoured the development of an excessive population.