It is not easily imagined that the Gauls were anciently much more advanced in the arts of life than their northern neighbours, since they travelled to this island for their education in the mysteries of the religion and philosophy of the Druids.​[94] I cannot therefore think that Gaul was then near so populous as France is at present. Were we to believe, indeed, and join together the testimony of Appian and that of Diodorus Siculus, we must admit an incredible populousness in Gaul. The former historian says that there were 400 nations in that country; the latter affirms that the largest of the Gallic nations consisted of 200,000 men, besides women and children, and the least of 50,000. Calculating therefore at a medium, we must admit of near 200,000,000 of people in a country which we esteem populous at present, though supposed to contain little more than twenty.​[95] Such calculations therefore by their extravagance lose all manner of authority. We may observe that that equality of property, to which the populousness of antiquity may be ascribed, had no place among the Gauls. Their intestine wars also, before Cæsar’s time, were almost perpetual. And Strabo observes that though all Gaul was cultivated, yet it was not cultivated with any skill or care, the genius of the inhabitants leading them less to arts than arms, till their slavery to Rome produced peace among themselves. Cæsar enumerates very particularly the great forces which were levied at Belgium to oppose his conquests, and makes them amount to 208,000. These were not the whole people able to bear arms in Belgium; for the same historian tells us that the Bellovaci could have brought a hundred thousand men into the field, though they engaged only for sixty. Taking the whole, therefore, in this proportion of ten to six, the sum of fighting men in all the states of Belgium was about 350,000; all the inhabitants a million and a half. And Belgium being about the fourth of Gaul, that country might contain six millions, which is not the third of its present inhabitants.​[96] We are informed by Cæsar that the Gauls had no fixed property in land; but that the chieftains, when any death happened in a family, made a new division of all the lands among the several members of the family. This is the custom of Tanistry, which so long prevailed in Ireland, and which retained that country in a state of misery, barbarism, and desolation. The ancient Helvetia was 250 miles in length and 180 in breadth, according to the same author, yet contained only 360,000 inhabitants. The Canton of Berne alone has at present as many people. After this computation of Appian and Diodorus Siculus, I know not whether I dare affirm that the modern Dutch are more numerous than the ancient Batavi.