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An Inquiry Into The Nature And Causes Of The Wealth Of Nations - Chapter 4

1. Introduction And Plan Of The Work

2. Book 1, Chapter 1

3. Chapter 2

4. Chapter 3

5. Chapter 4

6. Chapter 5

7. Chapter 6

8. Chapter 7

9. Chapter 8

10. Chapter 8 continue

11. Chapter 9

12. Chapter 10

13. Chapter 10 continue

14. Chapter 11

15. Chapter 11 continue

16. Chapter 11 continue.

17. Chapter 11 continue..

18. Chapter 11 continue...

19. Conclusion of the Chapter 11

20. Book 2 Introduction

21. Chapter 1

22. Chapter II

23. Chapter II continue

24. Chapter II continue

25. Chapter 3

26. Chapter 4

27. Chapter 5

28. Book 3, Chapter 1

29. Chapter 2

30. Chapter 3

31. Chapter 4

32. Book 4, Chapter 1

33. Chapter 1 continue

34. Chapter 2

35. Chapter 3, Part 1

36. Chapter 3, Part 2

37. Chapter 4

38. Chapter 5

39. Chapter 5 continue

40. Chapter 6

41. Chapter 7, Part 1

42. Chapter 7, Part 2

43. Chapter 7, Part 3

44. Chapter 7, Part 3 continue

45. Chapter 8

46. Chapter 9

47. Book 5, Chapter 1, Part 1

48. Chapter 1, Part 2

49. Chapter 1, Part 3

50. Chapter 1, Part 3 continue

51. Chapter 1, Part 3 continue B

52. Chapter 1, Part 4

53. Chapter 2, Part 1

54. Chapter 2, Part 2

55. Chapter 2, Part 2 continue

56. Chapter 2, Part 2 continue B

57. Chapter 2, Part 2 continue C

58. Chapter 2, Part 2 continue D

59. Chapter 3

60. Chapter 3 continue







Chapter IV. How The Commerce Of Towns Contributed To The Improvement Of The Country.

The increase and riches of commercial and manufacturing towns
contributed to the improvement and cultivation of the countries to which
they belonged, in three different ways:

First, by affording a great and ready market for the rude produce of
the country, they gave encouragement to its cultivation and further
improvement. This benefit was not even confined to the countries in
which they were situated, but extended more or less to all those with
which they had any dealings. To all of them they afforded a market
for some part either of their rude or manufactured produce, and,
consequently, gave some encouragement to the industry and improvement
of all. Their own country, however, on account of its neighbourhood,
necessarily derived the greatest benefit from this market. Its rude
produce being charged with less carriage, the traders could pay the
growers a better price for it, and yet afford it as cheap to the
consumers as that of more distant countries.

Secondly, the wealth acquired by the inhabitants of cities was
frequently employed in purchasing such lands as were to be sold, of
which a great part would frequently be uncultivated. Merchants are
commonly ambitious of becoming country gentlemen, and, when they do,
they are generally the best of all improvers. A merchant is accustomed
to employ his money chiefly in profitable projects; whereas a mere
country gentleman is accustomed to employ it chiefly in expense. The one
often sees his money go from him, and return to him again with a profit;
the other, when once he parts with it, very seldom expects to see any
more of it. Those different habits naturally affect their temper and
disposition in every sort of business. The merchant is commonly a bold,
a country gentleman a timid undertaker. The one is not afraid to lay out
at once a large capital upon the improvement of his land, when he has
a probable prospect of raising the value of it in proportion to the
expense; the other, if he has any capital, which is not always the case,
seldom ventures to employ it in this manner. If he improves at all, it
is commonly not with a capital, but with what he can save out or his
annual revenue. Whoever has had the fortune to live in a mercantile
town, situated in an unimproved country, must have frequently observed
how much more spirited the operations of merchants were in this way,
than those of mere country gentlemen. The habits, besides, of order,
economy, and attention, to which mercantile business naturally forms a
merchant, render him much fitter to execute, with profit and success,
any project of improvement.

Thirdly, and lastly, commerce and manufactures gradually introduced
order and good government, and with them the liberty and security of
individuals, among the inhabitants of the country, who had before lived
almost in a continual state of war with their neighbours, and of servile
dependency upon their superiors. This, though it has been the least
observed, is by far the most important of all their effects. Mr Hume is
the only writer who, so far as I know, has hitherto taken notice of it.

In a country which has neither foreign commerce nor any of the finer
manufactures, a great proprietor, having nothing for which he can
exchange the greater part of the produce of his lands which is over and
above the maintenance of the cultivators, consumes the whole in rustic
hospitality at home. If this surplus produce is sufficient to maintain a
hundred or a thousand men, he can make use of it in no other way than by
maintaining a hundred or a thousand men. He is at all times, therefore,
surrounded with a multitude of retainers and dependants, who, having
no equivalent to give in return for their maintenance, but being fed
entirely by his bounty, must obey him, for the same reason that soldiers
must obey the prince who pays them. Before the extension of commerce and
manufactures in Europe, the hospitality of the rich and the great, from
the sovereign down to the smallest baron, exceeded every thing which, in
the present times, we can easily form a notion of Westminster-hall was
the dining-room of William Rufus, and might frequently, perhaps, not be
too large for his company. It was reckoned a piece of magnificence in
Thomas Becket, that he strewed the floor of his hall with clean hay or
rushes in the season, in order that the knights and squires, who could
not get seats, might not spoil their fine clothes when they sat down on
the floor to eat their dinner. The great Earl of Warwick is said to
have entertained every day, at his different manors, 30,000 people; and
though the number here may have been exaggerated, it must, however, have
been very great to admit of such exaggeration. A hospitality nearly of
the same kind was exercised not many years ago in many different parts
of the Highlands of Scotland. It seems to be common in all nations
to whom commerce and manufactures are little known. I have seen, says
Doctor Pocock, an Arabian chief dine in the streets of a town where
he had come to sell his cattle, and invite all passengers, even common
beggars, to sit down with him and partake of his banquet.

The occupiers of land were in every respect as dependent upon the great
proprietor as his retainers. Even such of them as were not in a state
of villanage, were tenants at will, who paid a rent in no respect
equivalent to the subsistence which the land afforded them. A crown,
half a crown, a sheep, a lamb, was some years ago, in the Highlands of
Scotland, a common rent for lands which maintained a family. In some
places it is so at this day; nor will money at present purchase a
greater quantity of commodities there than in other places. In a country
where the surplus produce of a large estate must be consumed upon the
estate itself, it will frequently be more convenient for the proprietor,
that part of it be consumed at a distance from his own house, provided
they who consume it are as dependent upon him as either his retainers
or his menial servants. He is thereby saved from the embarrassment of
either too large a company, or too large a family. A tenant at will, who
possesses land sufficient to maintain his family for little more than
a quit-rent, is as dependent upon the proprietor as any servant or
retainer whatever, and must obey him with as little reserve. Such a
proprietor, as he feeds his servants and retainers at his own house, so
he feeds his tenants at their houses. The subsistence of both is derived
from his bounty, and its continuance depends upon his good pleasure.

Upon the authority which the great proprietors necessarily had, in such
a state of things, over their tenants and retainers, was founded the
power of the ancient barons. They necessarily became the judges in
peace, and the leaders in war, of all who dwelt upon their estates.
They could maintain order, and execute the law, within their respective
demesnes, because each of them could there turn the whole force of all
the inhabitants against the injustice of anyone. No other person had
sufficient authority to do this. The king, in particular, had not. In
those ancient times, he was little more than the greatest proprietor
in his dominions, to whom, for the sake of common defence against their
common enemies, the other great proprietors paid certain respects.
To have enforced payment of a small debt within the lands of a great
proprietor, where all the inhabitants were armed, and accustomed to
stand by one another, would have cost the king, had he attempted it by
his own authority, almost the same effort as to extinguish a civil war.
He was, therefore, obliged to abandon the administration of justice,
through the greater part of the country, to those who were capable of
administering it; and, for the same reason, to leave the command of the
country militia to those whom that militia would obey.

It is a mistake to imagine that those territorial jurisdictions took
their origin from the feudal law. Not only the highest jurisdictions,
both civil and criminal, but the power of levying troops, of coining
money, and even that of making bye-laws for the government of their own
people, were all rights possessed allodially by the great proprietors of
land, several centuries before even the name of the feudal law was known
in Europe. The authority and jurisdiction of the Saxon lords in England
appear to have been as great before the Conquest as that of any of the
Norman lords after it. But the feudal law is not supposed to have
become the common law of England till after the Conquest. That the most
extensive authority and jurisdictions were possessed by the great lords
in France allodially, long before the feudal law was introduced
into that country, is a matter of fact that admits of no doubt. That
authority, and those jurisdictions, all necessarily flowed from the
state of property and manners just now described. Without remounting to
the remote antiquities of either the French or English monarchies, we
may find, in much later times, many proofs that such effects must always
flow from such causes. It is not thirty years ago since Mr Cameron of
Lochiel, a gentleman of Lochaber in Scotland, without any legal warrant
whatever, not being what was then called a lord of regality, nor even a
tenant in chief, but a vassal of the Duke of Argyll, and with out being
so much as a justice of peace, used, notwithstanding, to exercise the
highest criminal jurisdictions over his own people. He is said to have
done so with great equity, though without any of the formalities of
justice; and it is not improbable that the state of that part of the
country at that time made it necessary for him to assume this authority,
in order to maintain the public peace. That gentleman, whose rent never
exceeded £500 a-year, carried, in 1745, 800 of his own people into the
rebellion with him.

The introduction of the feudal law, so far from extending, may be
regarded as an attempt to moderate, the authority of the great allodial
lords. It established a regular subordination, accompanied with a
long train of services and duties, from the king down to the smallest
proprietor. During the minority of the proprietor, the rent, together
with the management of his lands, fell into the hands of his immediate
superior; and, consequently, those of all great proprietors into the
hands of the king, who was charged with the maintenance and education of
the pupil, and who, from his authority as guardian, was supposed to have
a right of disposing of him in marriage, provided it was in a manner not
unsuitable to his rank. But though this institution necessarily tended
to strengthen the authority of the king, and to weaken that of the great
proprietors, it could not do either sufficiently for establishing order
and good government among the inhabitants of the country; because it
could not alter sufficiently that state of property and manners from
which the disorders arose. The authority of government still continued
to be, as before, too weak in the head, and too strong in the inferior
members; and the excessive strength of the inferior members was the
cause of the weakness of the head. After the institution of feudal
subordination, the king was as incapable of restraining the violence of
the great lords as before. They still continued to make war according
to their own discretion, almost continually upon one another, and very
frequently upon the king; and the open country still continued to be a
scene of violence, rapine, and disorder.

But what all the violence of the feudal institutions could never have
effected, the silent and insensible operation of foreign commerce and
manufactures gradually brought about. These gradually furnished the
great proprietors with something for which they could exchange the whole
surplus produce of their lands, and which they could consume themselves,
without sharing it either with tenants or retainers. All for ourselves,
and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have
been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind. As soon, therefore, as
they could find a method of consuming the whole value of their rents
themselves, they had no disposition to share them with any other
persons. For a pair of diamond buckles, perhaps, or for something as
frivolous and useless, they exchanged the maintenance, or, what is the
same thing, the price of the maintenance of 1000 men for a year, and
with it the whole weight and authority which it could give them. The
buckles, however, were to be all their own, and no other human creature
was to have any share of them; whereas, in the more ancient method
of expense, they must have shared with at least 1000 people. With
the judges that were to determine the preference, this difference
was perfectly decisive; and thus, for the gratification of the most
childish, the meanest, and the most sordid of all vanities they
gradually bartered their whole power and authority.

In a country where there is no foreign commerce, nor any of the finer
manufactures, a man of £10,000 a-year cannot well employ his revenue in
any other way than in maintaining, perhaps, 1000 families, who are all
of them necessarily at his command. In the present state of Europe, a
man of £10,000 a-year can spend his whole revenue, and he generally does
so, without directly maintaining twenty people, or being able to command
more than ten footmen, not worth the commanding. Indirectly, perhaps,
he maintains as great, or even a greater number of people, than he could
have done by the ancient method of expense. For though the quantity of
precious productions for which he exchanges his whole revenue be very
small, the number of workmen employed in collecting and preparing it
must necessarily have been very great. Its great price generally arises
from the wages of their labour, and the profits of all their immediate
employers. By paying that price, he indirectly pays all those wages and
profits, and thus indirectly contributes to the maintenance of all the
workmen and their employers. He generally contributes, however, but a
very small proportion to that of each; to a very few, perhaps, not a
tenth, to many not a hundredth, and to some not a thousandth, or even
a ten thousandth part of their whole annual maintenance. Though he
contributes, therefore, to the maintenance of them all, they are all
more or less independent of him, because generally they can all be
maintained without him.

When the great proprietors of land spend their rents in maintaining
their tenants and retainers, each of them maintains entirely all his
own tenants and all his own retainers. But when they spend them in
maintaining tradesmen and artificers, they may, all of them taken
together, perhaps maintain as great, or, on account of the waste which
attends rustic hospitality, a greater number of people than before. Each
of them, however, taken singly, contributes often but a very small
share to the maintenance of any individual of this greater number. Each
tradesman or artificer derives his subsistence from the employment, not
of one, but of a hundred or a thousand different customers. Though
in some measure obliged to them all, therefore, he is not absolutely
dependent upon any one of them.

The personal expense of the great proprietors having in this manner
gradually increased, it was impossible that the number of their
retainers should not as gradually diminish, till they were at last
dismissed altogether. The same cause gradually led them to dismiss
the unnecessary part of their tenants. Farms were enlarged, and the
occupiers of land, notwithstanding the complaints of depopulation,
reduced to the number necessary for cultivating it, according to the
imperfect state of cultivation and improvement in those times. By the
removal of the unnecessary mouths, and by exacting from the farmer the
full value of the farm, a greater surplus, or, what is the same thing,
the price of a greater surplus, was obtained for the proprietor, which
the merchants and manufacturers soon furnished him with a method of
spending upon his own person, in the same manner as he had done the
rest. The cause continuing to operate, he was desirous to raise his
rents above what his lands, in the actual state of their improvement,
could afford. His tenants could agree to this upon one condition only,
that they should be secured in their possession for such a term of years
as might give them time to recover, with profit, whatever they should
lay not in the further improvement of the land. The expensive vanity of
the landlord made him willing to accept of this condition; and hence the
origin of long leases.

Even a tenant at will, who pays the full value of the land, is not
altogether dependent upon the landlord. The pecuniary advantages which
they receive from one another are mutual and equal, and such a tenant
will expose neither his life nor his fortune in the service of the
proprietor. But if he has a lease for along term of years, he is
altogether independent; and his landlord must not expect from him even
the most trifling service, beyond what is either expressly stipulated
in the lease, or imposed upon him by the common and known law of the
country.

The tenants having in this manner become independent, and the retainers
being dismissed, the great proprietors were no longer capable of
interrupting the regular execution of justice, or of disturbing the
peace of the country. Having sold their birth-right, not like Esau,
for a mess of pottage in time of hunger and necessity, but, in the
wantonness of plenty, for trinkets and baubles, fitter to be the
playthings of children than the serious pursuits of men, they became
as insignificant as any substantial burgher or tradesmen in a city.
A regular government was established in the country as well as in the
city, nobody having sufficient power to disturb its operations in the
one, any more than in the other.

It does not, perhaps, relate to the present subject, but I cannot
help remarking it, that very old families, such as have possessed some
considerable estate from father to son for many successive generations,
are very rare in commercial countries. In countries which have little
commerce, on the contrary, such as Wales, or the Highlands of Scotland,
they are very common. The Arabian histories seem to be all full of
genealogies; and there is a history written by a Tartar Khan, which
has been translated into several European languages, and which contains
scarce any thing else; a proof that ancient families are very common
among those nations. In countries where a rich man can spend his revenue
in no other way than by maintaining as many people as it can maintain,
he is apt to run out, and his benevolence, it seems, is seldom so
violent as to attempt to maintain more than he can afford. But where he
can spend the greatest revenue upon his own person, he frequently has
no bounds to his expense, because he frequently has no bounds to his
vanity, or to his affection for his own person. In commercial countries,
therefore, riches, in spite of the most violent regulations of law to
prevent their dissipation, very seldom remain long in the same family.
Among simple nations, on the contrary, they frequently do, without any
regulations of law; for among nations of shepherds, such as the Tartars
and Arabs, the consumable nature of their property necessarily renders
all such regulations impossible.

A revolution of the greatest importance to the public happiness, was in
this manner brought about by two different orders of people, who had not
the least intention to serve the public. To gratify the most childish
vanity was the sole motive of the great proprietors. The merchants and
artificers, much less ridiculous, acted merely from a view to their
own interest, and in pursuit of their own pedlar principle of turning
a penny wherever a penny was to be got. Neither of them had either
knowledge or foresight of that great revolution which the folly of the
one, and the industry of the other, was gradually bringing about.

It was thus, that, through the greater part of Europe, the commerce and
manufactures of cities, instead of being the effect, have been the cause
and occasion of the improvement and cultivation of the country.

This order, however, being contrary to the natural course of things, is
necessarily both slow and uncertain. Compare the slow progress of those
European countries of which the wealth depends very much upon their
commerce and manufactures, with the rapid advances of our North American
colonies, of which the wealth is founded altogether in agriculture.
Through the greater part of Europe, the number of inhabitants is not
supposed to double in less than five hundred years. In several of
our North American colonies, it is found to double in twenty or
five-and-twenty years. In Europe, the law of primogeniture, and
perpetuities of different kinds, prevent the division of great estates,
and thereby hinder the multiplication of small proprietors. A small
proprietor, however, who knows every part of his little territory, views
it with all the affection which property, especially small property,
naturally inspires, and who upon that account takes pleasure, not only
in cultivating, but in adorning it, is generally of all improvers the
most industrious, the most intelligent, and the most successful. The
same regulations, besides, keep so much land out of the market, that
there are always more capitals to buy than there is land to sell, so
that what is sold always sells at a monopoly price. The rent never
pays the interest of the purchase-money, and is, besides, burdened with
repairs and other occasional charges, to which the interest of money
is not liable. To purchase land, is, everywhere in Europe, a most
unprofitable employment of a small capital. For the sake of the superior
security, indeed, a man of moderate circumstances, when he retires from
business, will sometimes choose to lay out his little capital in land.
A man of profession, too whose revenue is derived from another source
often loves to secure his savings in the same way. But a young man,
who, instead of applying to trade or to some profession, should employ a
capital of two or three thousand pounds in the purchase and cultivation
of a small piece of land, might indeed expect to live very happily and
very independently, but must bid adieu for ever to all hope of either
great fortune or great illustration, which, by a different employment
of his stock, he might have had the same chance of acquiring with
other people. Such a person, too, though he cannot aspire at being a
proprietor, will often disdain to be a farmer. The small quantity of
land, therefore, which is brought to market, and the high price of
what is brought thither, prevents a great number of capitals from being
employed in its cultivation and improvement, which would otherwise have
taken that direction. In North America, on the contrary, fifty or sixty
pounds is often found a sufficient stock to begin a plantation with.
The purchase and improvement of uncultivated land is there the most
profitable employment of the smallest as well as of the greatest
capitals, and the most direct road to all the fortune and illustration
which can be required in that country. Such land, indeed, is in North
America to be had almost for nothing, or at a price much below the value
of the natural produce; a thing impossible in Europe, or indeed in
any country where all lands have long been private property. If landed
estates, however, were divided equally among all the children, upon the
death of any proprietor who left a numerous family, the estate would
generally be sold. So much land would come to market, that it could no
longer sell at a monopoly price. The free rent of the land would go no
nearer to pay the interest of the purchase-money, and a small capital
might be employed in purchasing land as profitable as in any other way.

England, on account of the natural fertility of the soil, of the great
extent of the sea-coast in proportion to that of the whole country,
and of the many navigable rivers which run through it, and afford the
conveniency of water carriage to some of the most inland parts of it,
is perhaps as well fitted by nature as any large country in Europe to be
the seat of foreign commerce, of manufactures for distant sale, and of
all the improvements which these can occasion. From the beginning of
the reign of Elizabeth, too, the English legislature has been peculiarly
attentive to the interest of commerce and manufactures, and in reality
there is no country in Europe, Holland itself not excepted, of which
the law is, upon the whole, more favourable to this sort of industry.
Commerce and manufactures have accordingly been continually advancing
during all this period. The cultivation and improvement of the country
has, no doubt, been gradually advancing too; but it seems to have
followed slowly, and at a distance, the more rapid progress of commerce
and manufactures. The greater part of the country must probably have
been cultivated before the reign of Elizabeth; and a very great part of
it still remains uncultivated, and the cultivation of the far greater
part much inferior to what it might be, The law of England, however,
favours agriculture, not only indirectly, by the protection of commerce,
but by several direct encouragements. Except in times of scarcity, the
exportation of corn is not only free, but encouraged by a bounty. In
times of moderate plenty, the importation of foreign corn is loaded with
duties that amount to a prohibition. The importation of live cattle,
except from Ireland, is prohibited at all times; and it is but of
late that it was permitted from thence. Those who cultivate the land,
therefore, have a monopoly against their countrymen for the two greatest
and most important articles of land produce, bread and butcher's meat.
These encouragements, although at bottom, perhaps, as I shall endeavour
to show hereafter, altogether illusory, sufficiently demonstrate at
least the good intention of the legislature to favour agriculture.
But what is of much more importance than all of them, the yeomanry of
England are rendered as secure, as independent, and as respectable,
as law can make them. No country, therefore, which the right of
primogeniture takes place, which pays tithes, and where perpetuities,
though contrary to the spirit of the law, are admitted in some cases,
can give more encouragement to agriculture than England. Such, however,
notwithstanding, is the state of its cultivation. What would it have
been, had the law given no direct encouragement to agriculture besides
what arises indirectly from the progress of commerce, and had left the
yeomanry in the same condition as in most other countries of Europe? It
is now more than two hundred years since the beginning of the reign of
Elizabeth, a period as long as the course of human prosperity usually
endures.

France seems to have had a considerable share of foreign commerce, near
a century before England was distinguished as a commercial country.
The marine of France was considerable, according to the notions of the
times, before the expedition of Charles VIII. to Naples. The cultivation
and improvement of France, however, is, upon the whole, inferior to
that of England. The law of the country has never given the same direct
encouragement to agriculture.

The foreign commerce of Spain and Portual to the other parts of Europe,
though chiefly carried on in foreign ships, is very considerable. That
to their colonies is carried on in their own, and is much greater, on
account of the great riches and extent of those colonies. But it has
never introduced any considerable manufactures for distant sale into
either of those countries, and the greater part of both still remains
uncultivated. The foreign commerce of Portugal is of older standing than
that of any great country in Europe, except Italy.

Italy is the only great country of Europe which seems to have been
cultivated and improved in every part, by means of foreign commerce and
manufactures for distant sale. Before the invasion of Charles VIII.,
Italy, according to Guicciardini, was cultivated not less in the most
mountainous and barren parts of the country, than in the plainest and
most fertile. The advantageous situation of the country, and the
great number of independent status which at that time subsisted in it,
probably contributed not a little to this general cultivation. It is not
impossible, too, notwithstanding this general expression of one of the
most judicious and reserved of modern historians, that Italy was not at
that time better cultivated than England is at present.

The capital, however, that is acquired to any country by commerce and
manufactures, is always a very precarious and uncertain possession, till
some part of it has been secured and realized in the cultivation and
improvement of its lands. A merchant, it has been said very properly, is
not necessarily the citizen of any particular country. It is in a great
measure indifferent to him from what place he carries on his trade; and
a very trifling disgust will make him remove his capital, and, together
with it, all the industry which it supports, from one country to
another. No part of it can be said to belong to any particular country,
till it has been spread, as it were, over the face of that country,
either in buildings, or in the lasting improvement of lands. No vestige
now remains of the great wealth said to have been possessed by the
greater part of the Hanse Towns, except in the obscure histories of the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It is even uncertain where some of
them were situated, or to what towns in Europe the Latin names given to
some of them belong. But though the misfortunes of Italy, in the end
of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries, greatly
diminished the commerce and manufactures of the cities of Lombardy and
Tuscany, those countries still continue to be among the most populous
and best cultivated in Europe. The civil wars of Flanders, and the
Spanish government which succeeded them, chased away the great commerce
of Antwerp, Ghent, and Bruges. But Flanders still continues to be one of
the richest, best cultivated, and most populous provinces of Europe. The
ordinary revolutions of war and government easily dry up the sources of
that wealth which arises from commerce only. That which arises from the
more solid improvements of agriculture is much more durable, and cannot
be destroyed but by those more violent convulsions occasioned by the
depredations of hostile and barbarous nations continued for a century or
two together; such as those that happened for some time before and after
the fall of the Roman empire in the western provinces of Europe.




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