 Chapter 7 Part A of the Wealth of Nations, Book 4. The interest, which occasioned the first settlement of the different European colonies in America and the West Indies, was not altogether so plain and distinct as that which directed the establishment of those of ancient Greece and Rome. All the different states of ancient Greece possessed each of them but a very small territory, and when the people in any one of them multiplied beyond what that territory could easily maintain, a part of them were sent in quest of a new habitation, in some remote and distant part of the world. The warlike neighbors who surrounded them on all sides, rendering it difficult for any of them to enlarge very much its territory at home. The colonies of the Dorians resorted chiefly to Italy and Sicily, which in the times preceding the foundation of Rome were inhabited by barbarous and uncivilized nations. Those of the Ionians and Iolians, the two other great tribes of the Greeks to Asia Minor and the islands of the Aegean Sea, of which the inhabitants sown at that time to have been pretty much in the same state as those of Sicily and Italy. The mother city, though she considered the colony as a child, at all times entitled to great favor and assistance and owing in return much gratitude and respect, yet considered it as an emancipated child over whom she pretended to claim no direct authority or jurisdiction. The colony settled its own form of government, enacted its own laws, elected its own magistrates, and made peace or war with its neighbors, as an independent state which had no occasion to wait for the approbation or consent of the mother city. Nothing can be more plain and distinct than the interest which directed every such establishment. Rome, like most of the other ancient republics, was originally founded upon an agrarian law which divided the public territory in a certain proportion among the different citizens who composed the state. The course of human affairs, by marriage, by succession, and by alienation, necessarily deranged this original division, and frequently through the lands which had been allotted for the maintenance of many different families into the possession of a single person. To remedy this disorder, for such it was supposed to be, a law was made restricting the quantity of land which any citizen could possess to five hundred jagara, about three hundred and fifty English acres. This law, however, though we read of its having been executed upon one or two occasions, was either neglected or evaded, and the inequality of fortunes went on continually increasing. The greater part of the citizens had no land, and without it the manners and customs of those times rendered it difficult for a free man to maintain his independency. In the present times, though a poor man has no land of his own, if he has a little stock, he may either farm the lands of another, or he may carry on some little retail trade. And if he has no stock, he may find employment either as a country laborer or as an artificer. But among the ancient Romans, the lands of the rich were all cultivated by slaves, who wrought under an overseer, who was likewise a slave, so that a poor free man had little chance of being employed either as a farmer or as a laborer. All trades and manufacturers, too, even the retail trade, were carried on by the slaves of the rich for the benefit of their masters, whose wealth, authority, and protection made it difficult for a poor free man to maintain the competition against them. The citizens therefore, who had no land, had scarce any other means of subsistence but the bounties of the candidates at the annual elections. The tribunes, when they had a mind to animate the people against the rich and the great, put them in mind of the ancient divisions of lands and represented that law which restricted this sort of private property as the fundamental law of the republic. The people became clamors to get land, and the rich and the great, we may believe, were perfectly determined not to give them any part of theirs. To satisfy them in some measure, therefore, they frequently proposed to send out a new colony. But conquering Rome was, even upon such occasions, under no necessity of turning out her citizens to seek their fortune, if one may say so, through the wide world without knowing where they were to settle. She assigned them lands generally in the conquered provinces of Italy, where, being within the dominions of the republic, they could never form any independent state, but were at best but a sort of corporation, which, though it had the power of enacting bylaws for its own government, was at all times subject to the correction, jurisdiction, and legislative authority of the mother city. The sending out of a colony of this kind not only gave some satisfaction to the people, but often established a sort of garrison, too, in a newly conquered province, of which the obedience might otherwise have been doubtful. A Roman colony, therefore, whether we consider the nature of the establishment itself or the motives for making it, was altogether different from a Greek one. The words accordingly, which in the original languages denote those different establishments, have very different meanings. The Latin word, colonia, signifies simply a plantation. The Greek word, apokia, on the contrary, signifies a separation of dwelling, a departure from home, a going out of the house. But though the Roman colonies were in many respects different from the Greek ones, the interest which prompted to establish them was equally plain and distinct. Both institutions derived their origin either from irresistible necessity or from clear and evident utility. The establishment of the European colonies in America and the West Indies arose from no necessity, and though the utility which has resulted from them has been very great, it is not altogether so clear and evident. It was not understood at their first establishment, and was not the motive either of that establishment or of the discoveries which gave occasion to it, and the nature, extent, and limits of that utility are not perhaps well understood at this day. The Venetians, during the 14th and 15th centuries, carried on a very advantageous commerce in Spiceries and other East India goods which they distributed among the other nations of Europe. They purchased them chiefly in Egypt at that time under the dominion of the Mamalukes, the enemies of the Turks, of whom the Venetians were the enemies, and this Union of interest, assisted by the money of Venice, formed such a connection as gave the Venetians almost a monopoly of the trade. The great prophets of the Venetians tempted the avidity of the Portuguese. They had been endeavoring, during the course of the 15th century, to find out by sea a way to the countries from which the Moors brought them ivory and gold dust across the desert. They discovered the Madeiras, the Canaries, the Azores, the Cape de Verde Islands, the coast of Guinea, that of Luongo, Congo, Angola, and Benguela, and finally the Cape of Good Hope. They had long wished to share in the profitable traffic of the Venetians, and this last discovery opened to them a probable prospect of doing so. In 1497 Vasco de Gammo sailed from the port of Lisbon with a fleet of four ships, and, after a navigation of eleven months, arrived upon the coast of Indostan, and thus completed a course of discoveries which had been pursued with great steadiness, and with very little interruption, for near a century together. Some years before this, while the expectations of Europe were in suspense about the projects of the Portuguese, of which the success appeared yet to be doubtful, a Genoese pilot formed the yet more daring project of sailing to the East Indies by the West. The situation of those countries was at that time very imperfectly known in Europe. The few European travelers who had been there had magnified the distance, perhaps through simplicity and ignorance, what was really very great, appearing almost infinite to those who could not measure it, or perhaps in order to increase somewhat more the marvelous of their own adventures in visiting regions so immensely remote from Europe. The longer the way was by the East, Columbus very justly concluded, the shorter it would be by the West. He proposed, therefore, to take that way as both the shortest and the surest, and he had the good fortune to convince Isabella of Castile of the probability of his project. He sailed from the port of Palos in August 1492, near five years before the expedition of Vasco de Gamo set out from Portugal, and, after a voyage of between two and three months, discovered first some of the small Bahama or Lusian islands, and afterwards the great island of St. Domingo. But the countries which Columbus discovered, either in this or in any of his subsequent voyages, had no resemblance to those which he had gone in quest of. Instead of the wealth, cultivation, and populousness of China and India, he found, in St. Domingo, and in all the other parts of the New World which he had ever visited, nothing but a country quite covered with wood, uncultivated, and inhabited only by some tribes of naked and miserable savages. He was not very willing, however, to believe that they were not the same with some of the countries described by Marco Polo, the first European who had visited, or at least left behind him, any description of China or the East Indies, and a very slight resemblance such as that which he found between the name of Cebao, and Mountain in St. Domingo, and that of Sipangii, mentioned by Marco Polo, was frequently sufficient to make him return to this favorite preposition, though contrary to the clearest evidence. In his letters to Ferdinand and Isabella, he called the countries which he had discovered the Indies. He entertained no doubt, but that they were the extremity of those which had been described by Marco Polo, and that they were not very distant from the Ganges, or from the countries which had been conquered by Alexander. Even when at last convinced that they were different, he still flattered himself that those rich countries were at no great distance, and in a subsequent voyage accordingly went in quest of them along the coast of Terraferma, and towards the Isthmus of Darien. In consequence of this mistake of Columbus, the name of the Indies has stuck to those unfortunate countries ever since, and when it was at last clearly discovered that the new were altogether different from the old Indies, the former were called the West, in contradistinction to the latter, which were called the East Indies. It was of importance to Columbus, however, that the countries which he had discovered, whatever they were, should be represented to the Court of Spain as a very great consequence, and in what constitutes the real riches of every country, the animal and vegetable productions of the soil, there was at that time nothing which could well justify such a representation of them. The quarry, something between a rat and a rabbit, and supposed by Mr. Buffon to be the same with the Aperia of Brazil, was the largest viviparous quadruped in St. Domingo. This species seems never to have been very numerous, and the dogs and cats of the Spaniers are said to have long ago almost entirely extirpated it, as well as some other tribes of a still smaller size. These however, together with a pretty large lizard called the Ivana, or Iguana, constituted the principal part of the animal food which the land afforded. The vegetable food of the inhabitants, though, from their want of industry, not very abundant, was not altogether so scanty. It consisted in Indian corn, yams, potatoes, bananas, etc., plants which were then altogether unknown in Europe, and which have never since been very much esteemed in it, or supposed to yield a sustenance equal to what is drawn from the common sorts of grain and pulse, which have been cultivated in this part of the world time out of mind. The cotton plant indeed afforded the material of a very important manufacturer, and was at that time, to Europeans, undoubtedly the most valuable of all the vegetable productions of those islands. But though, in the end of the fifteenth century, the muslins and other cotton goods of the East Indies were much esteemed in every part of Europe, the cotton manufacturer itself was not cultivated in any part of it. Even this production, therefore, could not at that time appear in the eyes of Europeans to be a very great consequence. Being nothing, either in the animals or vegetables of the newly discovered countries, which could justify a very advantageous representation of them, Columbus turned his view towards their minerals, and in the richness of their productions of this third kingdom, he flattered himself he had found a full compensation for the insignificancy of those of the other two. The little bits of gold with which the inhabitants ornamented their dress, and which he was informed they frequently found in the rivulets and torrents which fell from the mountains, were sufficient to satisfy him that those mountains abounded with the richest gold mines. Saint Domingo, therefore, was represented as a country abounding with gold, and upon that account, according to the prejudices not only of the present times, but of those times, an inexhaustible source of real wealth to the crown and kingdom of Spain. When Columbus, upon his return from his first voyage, was introduced with a sort of triumphal honors to the sovereigns of Castile and Aragon, the principal productions of the countries which he had discovered were carried in solemn procession before him. The only valuable part of them consisted in some little fillets, bracelets, and other ornaments of gold, and in some bales of cotton. The rest were mere objects of vulgar wonder and curiosity. Some reeds of an extraordinary size, some birds of very beautiful plumage, and some stuffed skins of the huge alligator and manatee, all of which were preceded by six or seven of the wretched natives whose singular color and appearance added greatly to the novelty of the show. In consequence of the representations of Columbus, the Council of Castile determined to take possession of the countries of which the inhabitants were plainly incapable of defending themselves. The pious purpose of converting them to Christianity sanctified the injustice of the project. But the hope of finding treasures of gold there was the sole motive which prompted to undertake it, and to give this motive the greater weight, it was proposed by Columbus that the half of all the gold and silver that should be found there should belong to the crown. This proposal was approved of by the Council. As long as the whole or the greater part of the gold which the first adventurers imported into Europe was got by so very easy a method as the plundering of the defenseless natives, it was not perhaps very difficult to pay even this heavy tax. But when the natives were once fairly stripped of all that they had, which in St. Domingo and in all the other countries discovered by Columbus was done completely in six or eight years, and when, in order to find more, it had become necessary to dig for it in the mines, there was no longer any possibility of paying this tax. With the rigorous exaction of it accordingly, first occasioned, it is said the total abandoning of the mines of St. Domingo, which have never been wrought since. It was soon reduced, therefore, to a third, then to a fifth, afterwards to a tenth, and at last to a twentieth part of the gross produce of the gold mines. The tax upon silver continued for a long time to be a fifth of the gross produce. It was reduced to a tenth, only in the course of the present century. But the first adventurers do not appear to have been much interested about silver. Nothing less precious than gold seemed worthy of their attention. All the other enterprises of the Spaniards in the New World, subsequent to those of Columbus, seemed to have been prompted by the same motive. It was the sacred thirst of gold that carried Oviera, Necuisa, and Vasco Núñez del Balboa, to the Isthmus of Darien, that carried Cortez to Mexico, Almagro and Pizarro to Chile, and Peru. When those adventurers arrived upon any unknown coast, their first inquiry was always if there was any gold to be found there. And according to the information which they received concerning this particular, they determined either to quit the country or to settle in it. Of all those expensive and uncertain projects, however, which bring bankruptcy upon the greater part of the people who engage in them, there is none, perhaps, more perfectly ruinous than the search after new silver and gold mines. It is perhaps the most disadvantageous lottery in the world, or the one in which the gain of those who draw the prizes bears the least proportion to the loss of those who draw the blanks. For though the prizes are few and the blanks many, the common price of a ticket is the whole fortune of a very rich man. The projects of mining, instead of replacing the capital employed in them, together with the ordinary profits of stock, commonly absorb both capital and profit. They are the projects, therefore, to which of all others a prudent law giver who desired to increase the capital of his nation would least choose to give any extraordinary encouragement, or to turn towards them a greater share of that capital than what would go to them of its own accord. Such, in reality, is the absurd confidence which almost all men have in their own good fortune, that wherever there is the least probability of success, too great a share of it is apt to go to them of its own accord. But though the judgment of sober reason and experience concerning such projects has always been extremely unfavorable, that of human avidity has commonly been quite otherwise. The same passion which has suggested to so many people the absurd idea of the philosopher's stone has suggested to others the equally absurd one of immense riches of gold and silver. They did not consider that the value of those metals has, in all ages and nations, arisen chiefly from their scarcity, and that their scarcity has arisen from the very small quantities of them which nature has anywhere deposited in one place, from the hard and intractable substances with which she has almost everywhere surrounded those small quantities, and consequently from the labor and expense which are everywhere necessary in order to penetrate and get at them. They flatter themselves that veins of those metals might in many places be found as large and as abundant as those which are commonly found of lead, or copper, or tin, or iron. The dream of Sir Walter Raleigh concerning the golden city and country of El Dorado may satisfy us that even wise men are not always exempt from such strange delusions. More than a hundred years after the death of that great man, the Jesuit, Gomelah, was still convinced of the reality of that wonderful country and expressed with great warmth and, I dare say, with great sincerity how happy he should be to carry the light of the gospel to a people who could so well reward the pious labors of their missionary. In the country as first discovered by the Spaniards no gold and silver mines are at present known which are supposed to be worth the working. The quantities of those metals which the first adventurers are said to have found there had probably been very much magnified as well as the fertility of the mines which were wrought immediately after the first discovery. What those adventurers were reported to have found, however, was sufficient to inflame the avidity of all their countrymen. Every Spaniard who sailed to America expect to find El Dorado. She, too, did upon this what she has done upon very few other occasions. She realized in some measure the extravagant hopes of her votaries and in the discovery and conquest of Mexico and Peru, of which the one happened about 30 and the other about 40 years after the first expedition of Columbus, she presented them with something not very unlike that perfusion of the precious metals which they sought for. A project of commerce to the East Indies therefore gave a occasion to the first discovery of the West. A project of conquest gave occasion to all the establishments of the Spaniards in those newly discovered countries. The motive which excited them to this conquest was a project of gold and silver mines, and a course of accidents which no human wisdom could foresee rendered this project much more successful than the undertakers had any reasonable grounds for expecting. The first adventurers of all the other nations of Europe who attempted to make settlements in America were animated by the like chimerical views, but they were not equally successful. It was more than a hundred years after the first settlement of the Brazils before any silver, gold, or diamond mines were discovered there. In the English, French, Dutch, and Danish colonies, none have ever yet been discovered, at least none that are at present supposed to be worth the working. The first English settlers in North America, however, offered a fifth of all the gold and silver which should be found there to the king, as a motive for granting them their patents. In the patents of Sir Walter Raleigh, to the London and Plymouth companies, to the Council of Plymouth, etc., this fifth was accordingly reserved to the ground. To the expectation of finding gold and silver mines, those first settlers, too, joined that of discovering a northwest passage to the East Indies. They have hitherto been disappointed in both. End of Book 4, Chapter 7, Part A. Chapter 7, Part B, of the Wealth of Nations, Book 4. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Stephen Escalera. The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith. Book 4, Chapter 7, Part B, of Colonies. Part 2, Causes of the Prosperity of New Colonies. The colony of a civilized nation, which takes possession either of a waste country, or of one so thinly inhabited that the natives easily give place to the new settlers, advances more rapidly to wealth and greatness than any other human society. The colonies carry out with them a knowledge of agriculture and of other useful arts superior to what can grow up of its own accord in the course of many centuries among savage and barbarous nations. They carry out with them too the habit of subordination, some notion of the regular government which takes place in their own country, of the system of laws which support it, and of a regular administration of justice, and they naturally establish something of the same kind in the new settlement. But among savage and barbarous nations, the natural progress of law and government is still slower than the natural progress of arts, after law and government have been so far established as is necessary for their protection. Every colonist gets more land than he can possibly cultivate. He has no rent and scarce any taxes to pay. No landlord shares with him in its produce, and the share of the sovereign is commonly but a trifle. He has every motive to render as great as possible a produce which is thus to be almost entirely his own. But his land is commonly so extensive that, with all his own industry and with all the industry of other people whom he can get to employ, he can seldom make it produce the tenth part of what it is capable of producing. He is eager therefore to collect laborers from all quarters and to reward them with the most liberal wages. But those liberal wages, joined to the plenty and cheapness of land, soon make those laborers leave him in order to become landlords themselves, and to reward with equal liberality other laborers who soon leave them for the same reason that they left their first master. The liberal reward of labor encourages marriage. The children, during the tender years of infancy, are well fed and properly taken care of, and when they are grown up, the value of their labor greatly overpays their maintenance. When arrived at maturity, the high price of labor and the low price of land enable them to establish themselves in the same manner as their fathers did before them. In other countries, rent and profit eat up wages, and the two superior orders of people oppress the inferior one. But in new colonies, the interest of the two superior orders obliges them to treat the inferior one with more generosity and humanity, at least where that inferior one is not in a state of slavery. Waste lands of the greatest natural fertility are to be had for a trifle. The inquiries of revenue, which the proprietor, who is always the undertaker, expects from their improvement, constitutes his profit, which, in these circumstances, is commonly very great. But this great profit cannot be made without employing the labor of other people in clearing and cultivating the land, and the disproportion between the great extent of the land and the small number of the people, which commonly takes place in new colonies, makes it difficult for him to get this labor. He does not therefore dispute about wages, but is willing to employ labor at any price. The high wages of labor encourage population. The cheapness and plenty of good land encourage improvement, and enable the proprietor to pay those high wages. In those wages consists almost the whole price of the land, and though they are high, considered as the wages of labor, they are low, considered as the price of what is so very valuable. What encourages the progress of population and improvement encourages that of real wealth and greatness. The progress of many of the ancient Greek colonies towards wealth and greatness seems accordingly to have been very rapid. In the course of a century or two, several of them appear to have rivaled, and even to have surpassed, their mother cities. Syracuse and Agragentum in Sicily, Tarentum and Locri in Italy, Ephesus and Miletus in Lesser Asia, appear by all accounts to have been at least equal to any of the cities of ancient Greece. Though posterior in their establishment, yet all the arts of refinement, philosophy, poetry, and eloquence seem to have been cultivated as early, and to have been improved as highly in them as in any part of the mother country. The schools of the two oldest Greek philosophers, those of Thales and Parthagoras, were established, it is remarkable, not in ancient Greece, but the one in an Asiatic, the other in an Italian colony. All those colonies had established themselves in countries inhabited by savage and barbarous nations, who easily gave place to the new settlers. They had plenty of good land, and as they were altogether independent of the mother city, they were at liberty to manage their own affairs in the way that they judged was most suitable to their own interests. The history of the Roman colonies is by no means so brilliant. Some of them, indeed, such as Florence, have in the course of many ages, and after the fall of the mother city, grown up to be considerable states. But the progress of no one of them seems ever to have been very rapid. They were all established in conquered provinces, which in most cases had been fully inhabited before. The quantity of land assigned to each colonist was seldom very considerable, and, as the colony was not independent, they were not always at liberty to manage their own affairs in the way that they judged was most suitable to their own interests. In the plenty of good land, the European colonies established in America and the West Indies resemble, and even greatly surpass, those of ancient Greece. In their dependency upon the mother state, they resembled those of ancient Rome. But their great distance from Europe has in all of them alleviated more or less the effects of this dependency. Their situation has placed them less in the view and less in the power of their mother country. In pursuing their interests their own way, their conduct has upon many occasions been overlooked, either because not known or not understood in Europe. And upon some occasions it has been fairly suffered and submitted to, because their distance rendered it difficult to restrain it. Even the violent and arbitrary government of Spain has, upon many occasions, been obliged to recall or soften the orders which had been given for the government of her colonies for fear of a general insurrection. The progress of all the European colonies in wealth, population, and improvement has accordingly been very great. The crown of Spain, by its share of the gold and silver, derived some revenue from its colonies from the moment of their first establishment. It was a revenue, too, of a nature to excite in human evidity the most extravagant expectation of still greater riches. The Spanish colonies, therefore, from the moment of their first establishment attracted very much the attention of their mother country, while those of the other European nations were for a long time in a great measure neglected. The former did not, perhaps, thrive the better and consequence of this attention, nor the latter the worse and consequence of this neglect. In proportion to the extent of the country which they in some measure possess, the Spanish colonies are considered as less populous and thriving than those of almost any other European nation. The progress even of the Spanish colonies, however, in population and improvement has certainly been very rapid and very great. The city of Lima, founded since the conquest, is represented by Ulloa as containing 50,000 inhabitants near thirty years ago. Quito, which had been but a miserable hamlet of Indians, is represented by the same author as in his time equally populous. Gimeli Carrere, a pretended traveler, it is said, indeed, but who seems everywhere to have written upon extreme good information, represents the city of Mexico as containing a hundred thousand inhabitants, a number which, in spite of all the exaggerations of the Spanish riders, is probably more than five times greater than what it contained in the time of Montezuma. These numbers exceed greatly those of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, the three greatest cities of the English colonies. Before the conquest of the Spaniards, there were no cattle fit for drought, either in Mexico or Peru. The Llama was their only beast of burden, and its strength seems to have been a good deal inferior to that of a common ass. The plow was unknown among them, they were ignorant of the use of iron, they had no coined money, nor any established instrument of commerce of any kind. Their commerce was carried on by barter. A sort of wooden spade was their principal instrument of agriculture. Sharp stones served them for knives and hatchets to cut with. Fish bones and the hard sinews of certain animals served them with needles to sew with, and these seem to have been their principal instruments of trade. In this state of things, it seems impossible that either of those empires could have been so much improved or so well cultivated as at present, when they are plentifully furnished with all sorts of European cattle, and when the use of iron, of the plow, and of many of the arts of Europe, have been introduced among them. But the populousness of every country must be in proportion to the degree of its improvement and cultivation. In spite of the cruel destruction of the natives which followed the conquest, these two great empires are probably more populous now than they ever were before, and the people are surely very different, for we must acknowledge, I apprehend, that the Spanish Crayolas are in many respects superior to the ancient Indians. After the settlements of the Spaniards, that of the Portuguese in Brazil is the oldest of any European nation in America. But as for a long time after the first discovery, neither gold nor silver mines were found in it, and as it afforded upon that account little or no revenue to the crown, it was, for a long time, in a great measure neglected. And during this state of neglect, it grew up to be a great and powerful colony. While Portugal was under the dominion of Spain, Brazil was attacked by the Dutch, who got possession of seven of the fourteen provinces into which it is divided. They expected soon to conquer the other seven, when Portugal recovered its independency by the elevation of the family of Braganza to the throne. The Dutch then, as enemies to the Spaniards, became friends to the Portuguese, who were likewise the enemies of the Spaniards. They agreed therefore to leave that part of Brazil which they had not conquered to the king of Portugal, who agreed to leave that part which they had conquered to them, as a matter not worth disputing about with such good allies. But the Dutch government soon began to oppress the Portuguese colonists, who, instead of amusing themselves with complaints, took arms against their new masters, and by their own valor and resolution with the connivants indeed, but without any avowed assistance from the mother country, drove them out of Brazil. The Dutch, therefore, finding it impossible to keep any part of the country to themselves, were contended that it should be entirely restored to the crown of Portugal. In this colony, there are said to be more than six hundred thousand people, either Portuguese, or descended from Portuguese, Crayolas, Milatos, and a mixed race between Portuguese and Brazilians. No one colony in America is supposed to contain so great a number of people of European extraction. Towards the end of the fifteenth, and during the greater part of the sixteenth century, Spain and Portugal were the two great naval powers upon the ocean. For though the commerce of Venice extended to every part of Europe, its fleet had scarce ever sailed beyond the Mediterranean. The Spaniards, in virtue of the first discovery, claimed all America as their own. And though they could not hinder so great a naval power as that of Portugal from settling in Brazil, such was at that time the terror of their name that the greater part of the other nations of Europe were afraid to establish themselves in any other part of that great continent. The French, who attempted to settle in Florida, were all murdered by the Spaniards. But the declension of the naval power of this latter nation, and consequence of the defeat or miscarriage of what they called their invincible armada, which happened towards the end of the 16th century, put it out of their power to obstruct any longer the settlements of the other European nations. In the course of the 17th century, therefore, the English, French, Dutch, Danes, and Swedes, all the great nations who had any ports upon the ocean, attempted to make some settlements in the new world. The Swedes established themselves in New Jersey, and the number of Swedish families still to be found there sufficiently demonstrates that this colony was very likely to prosper, had it been protected by the mother country. But being neglected by Sweden, it was soon swallowed up by the Dutch colony of New York, which again, in 1674, fell under the dominion of the English. The small islands of St. Thomas and Santa Cruz are the only countries in the new world that have ever been possessed by the Danes. These little settlements, too, were under the government of an exclusive company, which had the sole right, both of purchasing the surplus produce of the colonies, and of supplying them with such goods of other countries as they wanted, and which, therefore, both in its purchases and sales, had not only the power of oppressing them, but the greatest temptation to do so. The government of an exclusive company of merchants is perhaps the worst of all governments for any country, whatever. It was not, however, able to stop altogether the progress of these colonies, though it rendered it more slow and languid. The late King of Denmark dissolved this company, and since that time the prosperity of these colonies has been very great. The Dutch settlements in the West, as well as those in the East Indies, were originally put under the government of an exclusive company. The progress of some of them, therefore, though it has been considerable in comparison with that of almost any country that has been long people and established, has been languid and slow in comparison with that of the greater part of new colonies. The colony of Suriname, though very considerable, is still inferior to the greater part of the sugar colonies of the other European nations. The colony of Nova Belga, now divided into the two provinces of New York and New Jersey, would probably have soon become considerable too, even though it had remained under the government of the Dutch. The plenty and cheapness of good land are such powerful causes of prosperity that the very worst government is scarce capable of checking altogether the efficacy of their operation. The great distance, too, from the mother country would enable the colonists to evade, more or less, by smuggling the monopoly which the company enjoyed against them. At present, the company allows all Dutch ships to trade to Suriname upon paying two and a half percent upon the value of their cargo for a license, and only reserves to itself exclusively the direct trade from Africa to America, which consists almost entirely in the slave trade. This relaxation in the exclusive privileges of the company is probably the principal cause of that degree of prosperity which that colony at present enjoys. Curacao and Eustatia, the two principal islands belonging to the Dutch, are free ports, open to the ships of all nations, and this freedom in the midst of better colonies, whose ports are open to those of one nation only, has been the great cause of the prosperity of those two barren islands. The French colony of Canada was, during the greater part of the last century, and some part of their present, under the government of an exclusive company. Under so unfavorable an administration, its progress was necessarily very slow, in comparison with that of other new colonies. But it became much more rapid when this company was dissolved after the fall of what is called the Mississippi Scheme. When the English got possession of this country, they found in it near double the number of inhabitants which Father Charlevoy had assigned to it between twenty and thirty years before. That Jesuit had traveled over the whole country and had no inclination to represent it as less considerable than it really was. The French colony of Saint Domingo was established by pirates and freebooters, who, for a long time, neither required the protection nor acknowledged the authority of France. And when that race of Banditi became so far citizens as to acknowledge this authority, it was for a long time necessary to exercise it with very great gentleness. During this period, the population and improvement of this colony increased very fast. Even the oppression of the exclusive company, to which it was for some time subjected with all the other colonies of France, though it no doubt retarded, had not been able to stop its progress altogether. The course of its prosperity returned as soon as it was relieved from that oppression. It is now the most important of the sugar colonies of the West Indies, and its produce is said to be greater than that of all the English sugar colonies put together. The other sugar colonies of France are in general all very thriving. But there are no colonies of which the progress has been more rapid than that of the English in North America. Plenty of good land and liberty to manage their own affairs their own way seemed to be the two great causes of the prosperity of all new colonies. In the plenty of good land, the English colonies in North America, though no doubt very abundantly provided, are however inferior to those of the Spaniards and Portuguese and not superior to some of those possessed by the French before the late war. But the political institutions of the English colonies have been more favorable to the improvement and cultivation of this land than those of the other three nations. First, the engrossing of uncultivated land, though it has by no means been prevented altogether, has been more restrained in the English colonies than in any other. The colony law, which imposes upon every proprietor the obligation of improving and cultivating, within a limited time, a certain proportion of his lands and which, in case of failure, declares those neglected lands grantable to any other person, though it has not perhaps been very strictly executed, has however had some effect. Secondly, in Pennsylvania there is no right of promogeniture, and lands like moveables are divided equally among all the children of the family. In three of the provinces of New England the oldest has only a double share, as in the Mosaic Law. Though in those provinces therefore too great a quantity of land should sometimes be engrossed by a particular individual, it is likely in the course of a generation or two to be sufficiently divided again. In the other English colonies, indeed, the right of promogeniture takes place as in the Law of England, but in all the English colonies the tenure of the lands which are all held by free socket facilitates alienation, and the grantee of an extensive tract of land generally finds it for his interest to alienate as fast as he can the greater part of it, reserving only a small quit rent. In the Spanish and Portuguese colonies what is called the right of Majorazo takes place in the succession of all those great estates to which any title of honor is annexed. Such estates go all to one person and are in effect entailed and unalienable. The French colonies indeed are subject to the custom of Paris, which, in the inheritance of land, is much more favorable to the younger children than the Law of England. But in the French colonies, if any part of an estate held by the noble tenure of chivalry and homage is alienated, it is, for a limited time, subject to the right of redemption, either by the heir of the superior or by the heir of the family. And all the largest estates of the country are held by such noble tenures which necessarily embarrass alienation. But in a new colony a great uncultivated estate is likely to be much more speedily divided by alienation than by succession. The plenty and cheapness of good land it has already been observed are the principal causes of the rapid prosperity of new colonies. The engrossing of land, in effect, destroys this plenty and cheapness. The engrossing of uncultivated land besides is the greatest obstruction to its improvement. But the labor that is employed in the improvement and cultivation of land affords the greatest and most valuable produce to the society. The produce of labor in this case pays not only its own wages and the profit of the stock which employs it, but the rent of the land too upon which it is employed. The labor of the English colonies, therefore, being more employed in the improvement and cultivation of land, is likely to afford a greater and more valuable produce than that of any of the other three nations, which, by the engrossing of land, is more or less diverted towards other employments. Thirdly, the labor of the English colonists is not only likely to afford a greater and more valuable produce, but in consequence of the moderation of their taxes, a greater proportion of this produce belongs to themselves, which they may store up and employ in putting into motion a still greater quantity of labor. The English colonists have never yet contributed anything towards the defense of the mother country, or towards the support of its civil government. They themselves, on the contrary, have hitherto been defended almost entirely at the expense of the mother country. But the expense of fleets and armies is out of all proportion greater than the necessary expense of civil government. The expense of their own civil government has always been very moderate. It has generally been confined to what was necessary for paying competent salaries to the governor, to the judges, and to some other officers of police, and for maintaining a few of the most useful public works. The expense of the civil establishment of Massachusetts Bay, before the commencement of the present disturbances, used to be but about eighteen thousand pound a year, that of New Hampshire and Rhode Island, three thousand five hundred pound each, that of Connecticut, four thousand pound, that of New York and Pennsylvania, four thousand five hundred pound each, that of New Jersey, one thousand two hundred pounds, that of Virginia and South Carolina, eight thousand pounds each. The civil establishments of Nova Scotia and Georgia are partly supported by an annual grant of parliament, but Nova Scotia pays, besides about seven thousand pounds a year towards the public expenses of the colony, and Georgia about two thousand five hundred pounds a year. All the different civil establishments in North America, in short, exclusive of those of Maryland and North Carolina, of which no exact account has been got, did not, before the commencement of the present disturbances, cost the inhabitants about sixty four thousand seven hundred pounds a year. An ever memorable example at how small an expense three millions of people may not only be governed, but well governed. The most important part of the expensive government, indeed, that of defense and protection, has constantly fallen upon the mother country. The ceremonial, too, of the civil government in the colonies, upon the reception of a new governor, upon the opening of a new assembly, etc., though sufficiently decent, is not accompanied with any expensive pomp or parade. Their ecclesiastical government is conducted upon a plan equally frugal. Tithes are unknown among them, and their clergy, who are far from being numerous, are maintained either by moderate stipends, or by the voluntary contributions of the people. The power of Spain and Portugal, on the contrary, derives some support from the taxes levied upon their colonies. France, indeed, has never drawn any considerable revenue from its colonies, the taxes which it levies upon them, being generally spent among them. But the colony government of all these three nations is conducted upon a much more extensive plan, and is accompanied with a much more expensive ceremonial. The sums spent upon the reception of a new viceroy of Peru, for example, have frequently been enormous. Such ceremonials are not only real taxes paid by the rich colonists upon those particular occasions, but they serve to introduce among them the habit of vanity and expense upon all other occasions. They are not only very grievous occasional taxes, but they contribute to establish perpetual taxes of the same kind still more grievous, the ruinous taxes of private luxury and extravagance. In the colonies of all those three nations too, the ecclesiastical government is extremely oppressive. Tithes take place in all of them, and are levied with the utmost rigor in those of Spain and Portugal. All of them, besides, are oppressed with a numerous race of mendicant friars, whose beggary, being not only licensed, but consecrated by religion, is a most grievous tax upon the poor people who are most carefully taught that it is a duty to give and a very great sin to refuse them their charity. Over and above all this, the clergy are, in all of them, the greatest engrossers of land. Fourthly, in the disposal of their surplus produce, or of what is over and above their own consumption, the English colonies have been more favored, and have been allowed a more extensive market than those of any other European nation. Every European nation has endeavored, more or less, to monopolize to itself the commerce of its colonies, and, upon that account, has prohibited the ships of foreign nations from trading to them, and has prohibited them from importing European goods from any foreign nation. But the manner in which this monopoly has been exercised in different nations has been very different. Some nations have given up the whole commerce of their colonies to an exclusive company, of whom the colonists were obliged to buy all such European goods as they wanted, and to whom they were obliged to sell the whole of their surplus produce. It was the interest of the company, therefore, not only to sell the former as dear, and to buy the latter as cheap as possible, but to buy no more of the latter, even at this low price, than what they could dispose of for a very high price in Europe. It was their interest not only to degrade, in all cases, the value of the surplus produce of the colony, but in many cases, to discourage and keep down the natural increase of its quantity. Of all the expedience that can well be contrived to stunt the natural growth of a new colony, that of an exclusive company is undoubtedly the most effectual. This, however, has been the policy of Holland, though their company, in the course of the present century, has given up in many respects the exertion of their exclusive privilege. This, too, was the policy of Denmark till the reign of the late king. It has occasionally been the policy of France, and of late, since 1755, after it had been abandoned by all other nations on account of its absurdity, it has become the policy of Portugal, with regard at least to two of the principal provinces of Brazil, Pernambuco and Marinão. Other nations, without establishing an exclusive company, have confined the whole commerce of their colonies to a particular port of the mother country, from whence no ship was allowed to sail, but either in a fleet and at a particular season, or, if single, in consequence of a particular license, which in most cases was very well paid for. This policy opened, indeed, the trade of the colonies to all the natives of the mother country, provided they traded from the proper port at the proper season and in the proper vessels. But as all the different merchants, who joined their stocks in order to fit out those licensed vessels, would find it for their interest to act in concert, the trade which was carried on in this manner would necessarily be conducted very nearly upon the same principles as that of an exclusive company. The profit of those merchants would be almost equally exorbitant and oppressive. The colonies would be ill supplied and would be obliged both to buy very dear and to sell very cheap. This, however, till within these few years had always been the policy of Spain and the price of all European goods, accordingly, is said to have been enormous in the Spanish West Indies. At Quito, we are told by Ulloa, a pound of iron sold for about four shillings, sixpence, and a pound of steel for about six shillings, ninepence, sterling. But it is chiefly in order to purchase European goods that the colonies part with their own produce. The more, therefore, they pay for the one, the less they really get for the other. And the dearness of the one is the same thing with the cheapness of the other. The policy of Portugal is, in this respect, the same as the ancient policy of Spain, with regard to all its colonies, except Pernambuco and Marinón, and with regard to these it has lately adopted a still worse. Other nations leave the trade of their colonies free to all their subjects who may carry it on from all the different ports of the mother country and who have occasioned for no other license than the common dispatches of the custom house. In this case, the number and dispersed situation of the different traders renders it impossible for them to enter into any general combination, and their competition is sufficient to hinder them from making very exorbitant profits. Under so liberal a policy, the colonies are enabled both to sell their own produce and to buy the goods of Europe at a reasonable price, but since the dissolution of the Plymouth Company, when our colonies were but in their infancy, this has always been the policy of England. It has generally too been that of France and has been uniformly so since the dissolution of what in England is commonly called their Mississippi Company. The profits of the trade therefore, which France and England carry on with their colonies, though no doubt somewhat higher than if the competition were free to all other nations, are however by no means exorbitant, and the price of European goods accordingly is not extravagantly high in the greater part of the colonies of either of those nations. In the exportation of their own surplus produce too, it is only with regard to certain commodities that the colonies of Great Britain are confined to the market of the mother country. These commodities having been enumerated in the act of navigation and in some other subsequent acts have upon that account been called enumerated commodities. The rest are all called non-enumerated and may be exported directly to other countries provided it is in British or Plantation ships of which the owners and three-fourths of the mariners are British subjects. End of Book 4, Chapter 7, Part B Chapter 7, Part C of the Wealth of Nations, Book 4 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Stephen Escalera The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith Book 4, Chapter 7, Part C of Colonies Among the non-enumerated commodities are some of the most important productions of America and the West Indies grain of all sorts, lumber, salt provisions, fish, sugar, and rum. Grain is naturally the first and principal object of the culture of all new colonies. By allowing them a very extensive market for it, the law encourages them to extend this culture much beyond the consumption of a thinly inhabited country, and thus to provide beforehand an ample subsistence for a continually increasing population. In a country quite covered with wood, where timber consequently is of little or no value, the expense of clearing the ground is the principal obstacle to improvement. By allowing the colonies a very extensive market for their lumber, the law endeavors to facilitate improvement by raising the price of a commodity which would otherwise be of little value, and thereby enabling them to make some profit of what would otherwise be mere expense. In a country neither half-peopled nor half-cultivated, cattle naturally multiply beyond the consumption of the inhabitants, and are often upon that account of little or no value. But it is necessary, it has already been shown, that the price of cattle should bear a certain proportion to that of corn, before the greater part of the lands of any country can be improved. By allowing to American cattle in all shapes, dead and alive, a very extensive market, the law endeavors to raise the value of a commodity, of which the high price is so very essential to improvement. The good effects of this liberty, however, must be somewhat diminished by the fourth of George III, C. XV, which puts hides and skins among the enumerated commodities, and thereby tends to reduce the value of American cattle. To increase the shipping and naval power of Great Britain by the extension of the fisheries of our colonies is an object which the legislature seems to have had almost constantly in view. Those fisheries upon this account have had all the encouragement which freedom can give them, and they have flourished accordingly. The New England fishery in particular was, before the late disturbances, one of the most important, perhaps, in the world. The whale fishery, which, notwithstanding an extravagant bounty, is in Great Britain carried on to so little purpose that in the opinion of many people, which I do not, however, pretend to warrant, the whole produce does not much exceed the value of the bounties which are annually paid for it, is in New England carried on without any bounty to a very great extent. Fish is one of the principal articles with which the North Americans trade to Spain, Portugal, and the Mediterranean. Sugar was originally an enumerated commodity which could only be exported to Great Britain. But in 1751, upon a representation of the sugar planters, its exportation was permitted to all parts of the world. The restrictions, however, with which this liberty was granted, joined to the high price of sugar in Great Britain, have rendered it in a great measure ineffectual. Great Britain and her colonies still continue to be almost the sole market for all sugar produced in the British plantations. Their consumption increases so fast that, though in consequence of the increase in improvement of Jamaica, as well as of the seeded islands, the importation of sugar has increased very greatly within these 20 years, the exportation to foreign countries is said to be not much greater than before. Rum is a very important article in the trade which the Americans carry on to the coast of Africa, from which they bring back Negro slaves in return. If the whole surplus produce of America, and grain of all sorts, in salt provisions, and in fish, had been put into the enumeration and thereby forced into the market of Great Britain, it would have interfered too much with the produce of the industry of our own people. It was probably not so much from any regard to the interests of America, as from a jealousy of this interference, that those important commodities have not only been kept out of the enumeration, but that the importation into Great Britain, of all grain, except rice, and of all salt provisions has in the ordinary state of the law been prohibited. The non-enumerated commodities could originally be exported to all parts of the world. Lumber and rice, having been once put into the enumeration, when they were afterwards taken out of it, were confined, as to the European market, to the countries that lie south of Cape Finastera. By the 6th of George III, C-52, all non-enumerated commodities were subjected to the like restriction. The parts of Europe which lie south of Cape Finastera are not manufacturing countries, and we are less jealous of the colony ships carrying home from them any manufacturers which could interfere with our own. The enumerated commodities are of two sorts. First, such as are either the peculiar produce of America, or as cannot be produced, or at least are not produced in the mother country. Of this kind are molasses, coffee, coconuts, tobacco, pimento, ginger, whale fins, raw silk, cotton, wool, beaver, and other peltry of America, indigo, fustic, and other dying woods. Secondly, such as are not the peculiar produce of America, but which are, and may be, produced in the mother country, though not in such quantities as to supply the greater part of her demand, which is principally supplied from foreign countries. Of this kind are all naval stores, masts, yards, and bow spritz, tar, pitch, and turpentine, pig, and bar iron, copper ore, hides and skins, pot, and pearl ashes. The largest importation of commodities of the first kind could not discourage the growth or interfere with the sale of any part of the produce of the mother country. By confining them to the home market, our merchants, it was expected, would not only be enabled to buy them cheaper in the plantations, and consequently to sell them with a better profit at home, but to establish between the plantations and foreign countries an advantageous carrying trade of which Great Britain was necessarily to be the center, or emporium, as the European country into which those commodities were first to be imported. The importation of commodities of the second kind might be so managed to, it was supposed, as to interfere not with the sale of those of the same kind which were produced at home, but with that of those which were imported from foreign countries. Because, by means of proper duties, they might be rendered always somewhat dearer than the former, and yet a good deal cheaper than the latter. By confining such commodities to the home market, therefore, it was proposed to discourage the produce, not of Great Britain, but of some foreign countries with which the balance of trade was believed to be unfavorable to Great Britain. The prohibition of exporting from the colonies to any other country but Great Britain, masts, yards, and bowsprits, tar, pitch, and turpentine, naturally tended to lower the price of timber in the colonies, and consequently to increase the expense of clearing their lands, the principal obstacle to their improvement. But about the beginning of the present century, in 1703, the pitch and tar company of Sweden endeavored to raise the price of their commodities to Great Britain by prohibiting their exportation, except in their own ships, at their own price, and in such quantities as they thought proper. In order to counteract this notable piece of mercantile policy, and to render herself as much as possible independent, not only of Sweden, but of all the other northern powers, Great Britain gave a bounty upon the importation of naval stores from America, and the effect of this bounty was to raise the price of timber in America much more than the confinement to the home market could lower it, and as both regulations were enacted at the same time, their joint effect was rather to encourage than to discourage the clearing of land in America. Though pig and bar iron, too, have been put among the enumerated commodities, yet as, when imported from America, they are exempted from considerable duties to which they are subject when imported from any other country, the one part of the regulation contributes more to encourage the erection of furnaces in America than the other to discourage it. There is no manufacture which occasions so great a consumption of wood as a furnace, or which can contribute so much to the clearing of a country overgrown with it. The tendency of some of these regulations to raise the value of timber in America, and thereby to facilitate the clearing of the land was neither perhaps intended nor understood by the legislature. Though their beneficial effects, however, have been in disrespect accidental, they have not upon that account been less real. The most perfect freedom of trade is permitted between the British colonies of America and the West Indies, both in the enumerated and in the non enumerated commodities. Those colonies are now become so populous and thriving that each of them finds in some of the others a great and extensive market for every part of its produce. All of them taken together, they make a great internal market for the produce of one another. The liberality of England, however, towards the trade of her colonies has been confined chiefly to what concerns the market for their produce, either in its rude state or in what may be called the very first stage of manufacture. The more advanced or more refined manufacturers even of the colony produce, the merchants and manufacturers of Great Britain choose to reserve to themselves and have prevailed upon the legislature to prevent their establishment in the colonies sometimes by high duties and sometimes by absolute prohibitions. While, for example, muscovado sugars from the British plantations pay upon importation only six shillings four pence to a hundred weight, white sugars pay one pound, one shilling one pence and refined either double or single in loaves, four pound, two shillings, five pence, and eight twentieths. When those high duties were imposed Great Britain was the sole and she still continues to be their principal market to which the sugars of the British colonies could be exported. They amounted, therefore, to a prohibition at first of claying or refining sugar for any foreign market and at present of claying or refining it for the market which takes off, perhaps more than nine tenths of the whole produce. The manufacture of claying or refining sugar accordingly though it has flourished in all the sugar colonies of France has been little cultivated in any of those of England except for the market of the colonies themselves. While Grenada was in the hands of the French there was a refinery of sugar by claying at least upon almost every plantation. Since it fell into those of the English almost all works of this kind have been given up and there are at present October 1773 I am assured not above two or three remaining in the island. At present however by an indulgence of the custom house clad or refined sugar if reduced from loaves into powder is commonly imported as muscovado. While Great Britain encourages in America the manufacturing of pig and bar iron by exempting them from duties to which the light commodities are subject when imported from any other country she imposes an absolute prohibition upon the erection of steel furnaces and slit mills in any of her American plantations. She will not suffer her colonies to work in those more refined manufacturers even for their own consumption but insists upon their purchasing of her merchants and manufacturers all goods of this kind which they have occasion for. She prohibits the exportation from one province to another by water and even the carriage by land upon horseback or in a cart of hats of wools and woolen goods of the produce of America a regulation which effectually prevents the establishment of any manufacturer of such commodities for distant sale and confines the industry of her colonists in this way to such course and household manufacturers as a private family commonly makes for its own use or for that of some of its neighbors in the same province. To prohibit a great people however from making all that they can of every part of their own produce or from employing their stock and industry in the way that they judge most advantageous to themselves is a manifest violation of the most sacred rights of mankind. Unjust however as such prohibitions may be they have not hitherto been very hurtful to the colonies. Land is still so cheap and consequently labor so dear among them that they can import from the mother country almost all the more refined or more advanced manufacturers cheaper than they could make them for themselves. Though they had not therefore been prohibited from establishing such manufacturers yet in their present state of improvement a regard to their own interest would probably have prevented them from doing so. In their present state of improvement those prohibitions perhaps without cramping their industry or restraining it from any employment to which it would have gone of its own accord are only impertinent badges of slavery imposed upon them without any sufficient reason by the groundless jealousy of the merchants and manufacturers of the mother country. In a more advanced state they might be really oppressive and insupportable. Great Britain too as she confines to her own market some of the most important productions of the colonies so in compensation she gives to some of them an advantage in that market sometimes by imposing higher duties upon the like productions when imported from other countries and sometimes by giving bounties upon their importation from the colonies. In the first way she gives an advantage in the home market to the sugar tobacco and iron of her own colonies and in the second to their raw silk to their hemp and flax to their indigo to their naval stores and to their building timber. The second way of encouraging the colony produce by bounties upon importation is so far as I have been able to learn peculiar to Great Britain. The first is not. Portugal does not contend herself with imposing higher duties upon the importation of tobacco from any other country but prohibits it under the severest penalties. With regard to the importation of goods from Europe England has likewise dealt more liberally with her colonies than any other nation. Great Britain allows apart almost always the half generally a larger portion and sometimes the whole of the duty which is paid upon the importation of foreign goods to be drawn back upon their exportation to any foreign country. No independent foreign country it was easy to foresee would receive them if they came to it loaded with the heavy duties to which almost all foreign goods are subjected on their importation into Great Britain. Unless therefore some part of those duties was drawn back upon exportation there was an end of the carrying trade a trade so much favored by the mercantile system. Our colonies however are by no means independent foreign countries and Great Britain having assumed to herself the exclusive right of supplying them with all goods from Europe might have forced them in the same manner as other countries have done their colonies to receive such goods loaded with all the same duties which they paid in the mother country. But on the contrary till 1763 the same drawbacks were paid upon the exportation of the greater part of foreign goods to our colonies as to any independent foreign country. In 1763 indeed by the fourth of George III C-15 this indulgence was a good deal abated and it was enacted that no part of the duty called the old subsidy should be drawn back for any goods of the growth production or manufacture of Europe or the East Indies which should be exported from this kingdom to any British colony or plantation in America. Wines, white calicoes and muslins accepted. Before this law many different sorts of foreign goods might have been bought cheaper in the plantations than in the mother country and some may still. Of the greater part of the regulations concerning the colony trade the merchants who carry it on it must be observed have been the principal advisors. We must not wonder therefore if, in a great part of them their interest has been more considered than either that of the colonies or that of the mother country. In their exclusive privilege of supplying the colonies with all the goods which they wanted from Europe and of purchasing all such parts of their surplus produce as could not interfere with any of the trades which they themselves carried on at home the interest of the colonies was sacrificed to the interest of those merchants. In allowing the same drawbacks upon the re-exportation of the greater part of European and East India goods to the colonies as upon their re-exportation to any independent country the interest of the mother country was sacrificed to it even according to the mercantile ideas of that interest. It was for the interest of the merchants to pay as little as possible for the foreign goods which they sent to the colonies and, consequently, to get back as much as possible of the duties which they advanced upon their importation into Great Britain. They might thereby be enabled to sell in the colonies either the same quantity of goods with a greater profit or a greater quantity with the same profit and, consequently, to gain something either in the one way or the other. It was likewise for the interest of the colonies to get all such goods as cheap and in as great abundance as possible. But this might not always be for the interest of the mother country. She might frequently suffer, both in her revenue, by giving back a great part of the duties which had been paid upon the importation of such goods and in her manufacturers, by being undersold in the colony market and consequence of the easy terms upon which foreign manufacturers could be carried thither by means of those drawbacks. The progress of the linen manufacture of Great Britain, it has commonly said, has been a good deal retarded by the drawbacks upon the re-exportation of German linen to the American colonies. But though the policy of Great Britain, with regard to the trade of her colonies, has been dictated by the same mercantile spirit as that of other nations, it has, however, upon the whole, been less illiberal and oppressive than that of any of them. In everything except their foreign trade, the liberty of the English colonists to manage their own affairs their own way is complete. It is, in every respect, equal to that of their fellow citizens at home and is secured in the same manner by an assembly of the representatives of the people who claim the sole right of imposing taxes for the support of the colony government. The authority of this assembly overaws the executive power and neither the meanest nor the most obnoxious colonist as long as he obeys the law has anything to fear from the resentment, either of the governor or of any other civil or military officer in the province. The colony assemblies, though like the House of Commons in England, they are not always a very equal representation of the people, yet they approach more nearly to that character. And as the executive power either has not the means to corrupt them or on account of the support which it receives from the mother country is not under the necessity of doing so. They are, perhaps in general, more influenced by the inclinations of their constituents. The councils, which in the colony legislatures correspond to the House of Lords in Great Britain, are not composed of a hereditary nobility. In some of the colonies, as in three of the governments of New England, those councils are not appointed by the king but chosen by the representatives of the people. And none of the English colonies is there any hereditary nobility. In all of them, indeed, as in all other free countries, the descendant of an old colony family is more respected than an upstart of equal merit and fortune. But he is only more respected and he has no privileges by which he can be troublesome to his neighbors. Before the commencement of the present disturbances, the colony assemblies had not only the legislative but a part of the executive power. In Connecticut and Rhode Island, they elected the governor. In the other colonies, they appointed the revenue officers who collected the taxes imposed by those respective assemblies to whom those officers were immediately responsible. There is more equality therefore among the English colonists than among the inhabitants of the mother country. Their manners are more Republican, and the governments, those of three of the provinces of New England in particular, have hitherto been more Republican too. The absolute governments of Spain, Portugal, and France on the contrary take place in their colonies, and the discretionary powers which such governments commonly delegate to all their inferior officers are, on account of the great distance, naturally exercise there with more than ordinary violence. Under all absolute governments, there is more liberty in the capital than in any other part of the country. The sovereign himself can never have either interest or inclination to pervert the order of justice or to oppress the great body of the people. In the capital, his presence overalls, more or less, all his inferior officers, who, in the remote provinces, from whence the complaints of the people are less likely to reach him, can exercise their tyranny with much more safety. But the European colonies in America are more remote than the most distant provinces of the greatest empires which had ever been known before. The government of the English colonies is perhaps the only one which, since the world began, could give perfect security to the inhabitants of so very distant a province. The administration of the French colonies, however, has always been conducted with much more gentleness and moderation than that of the Spanish and Portuguese. This superiority of conduct is suitable both to the character of the French nation and to what forms the character of every nation, the nature of their government, which, though arbitrary and violent in comparison with that of Great Britain, is legal and free in comparison with those of Spain and Portugal. It is in the progress of the North American colonies, however, that the superiority of the English policy chiefly appears. The progress of the sugar colonies of France has been at least equal, perhaps superior to that of the greater part of those of England. And yet, the sugar colonies of England enjoy a free government nearly of the same kind with that which takes place in her colonies of North America. But the sugar colonies of France are not discouraged, like those of England, from refining their own sugar. And what is still of greater importance, the genius of their government naturally introduces a better management of their Negro slaves. In all European colonies, the culture of the sugar cane is carried on by Negro slaves. The constitution of those who have been born in the temperate climate of Europe could not, it is supposed, support the labor of digging the ground under the burning sun of the West Indies. And the culture of the sugar cane, as it is managed at present, is all hand labor, though in the opinion of many, the drill plow might be introduced into it with great advantage. But as the profit and success of the cultivation which is carried on by means of cattle depend very much upon the good management of those cattle, so the profit and success of that which is carried on by slaves must depend equally upon the good management of those slaves. And in the good management of their slaves, the French planters, I think it is generally allowed, are superior to the English. The law, so far as it gives some weak protection to the slave against the violence of his master, is likely to be better executed in a colony where the government is in a great measure arbitrary than in one where it is altogether free. In every country where the unfortunate law of slavery is established, the magistrate, when he protects the slave, and her medals in some measure in the management of the private property of the master. And in a free country where the master is, perhaps either a member of the colony assembly or an elector of such a member, he dares not do this, but with the greatest caution and circumspection. The respect which he is obliged to pay to the master renders it more difficult for him to protect the slave. But in a country where the government is in a great measure arbitrary, where it is usual for the magistrate to enter metal even in the management of the private property of individuals, and to send them, perhaps, a letra de cachet if they do not manage it according to his liking, it is much easier for him to give some protection to the slave, and common humanity naturally disposes him to do so. The protection of the magistrate renders the slave less contemptible in the eyes of his master, who is thereby induced to consider him with more regard and to treat him with more gentleness. Gentle usage renders the slave not only more faithful but more intelligent, and therefore upon a double account is more useful. He approaches more to the condition of a free servant and may possess some degree of integrity and attachment to his master's interests, virtues which frequently belong to free servants, but which can never belong to a slave, who is treated as slaves commonly are in countries where the master is perfectly free and secure. That the condition of a slave is better under an arbitrary than under a free government is, I believe, supported by the history of all ages and nations. In the Roman history, the first time we read of the magistrate interposing to protect the slave from the violence of his master is under the emperors. When Vides polio in the presence of Augustus ordered one of his slaves who had committed a slight fault to be cut into pieces and thrown into his fish pond in order to feed his fishes, the emperor commanded him, with indignation, to emancipate immediately not only that slave, but all the others that belong to him. Under the Republic, no magistrate could have had authority enough to protect the slave much less to punish the master. The stock it is to be observed which has improved the sugar colonies of France, particularly the great colony of Saint Domingo, has been raised almost entirely from the gradual improvement and cultivation of those colonies. It has been almost altogether the produce of the soil and of the industry of the colonists, or what comes to the same thing, the price of that produce, gradually accumulated by good management and employed in raising a still greater produce. But the stock which has improved and cultivated the sugar colonies of England has, a great part of it, been sent out from England and has by no means been altogether the produce of the soil and industry of the colonists. The prosperity of the English sugar colonies has been in a great measure owing to the great riches of England, of which a part has overflowed, if one may say so, upon these colonies. But the prosperity of the sugar colonies of France has been entirely owing to the good conduct of the colonists, which must therefore have had some superiority over that of the English, and this superiority has been remarked in nothing so much as in the good management of their slaves. Such have been the general outlines of the policy of the different European nations with regard to their colonies. The policy of Europe therefore has very little to boast of, either in the original establishment or, so far as concerns their internal government in the subsequent prosperity of the colonies of America. Folly and injustice seem to have been the principles which presided over and directed the first project of establishing those colonies, the folly of hunting after gold and silver mines, and the injustice of coveting the possession of a country whose harmless natives, far from having ever injured the people of Europe, had received the first adventurers with every mark of kindness and hospitality. The adventurers, indeed, who formed some of the latter establishments, joined to the chimerical project of finding gold and silver mines other motives more reasonable and more laudable. But even these motives do very little honor to the policy of Europe. The English Puritans, restrained at home, fled for freedom to America and established there the four governments of New England. The English Catholics, treated with much greater injustice, established that of Maryland, the Quakers, that of Pennsylvania. The Portuguese Jews, persecuted by the Inquisition, stripped of their fortunes and banished to Brazil, introduced by their example some sort of order and industry among the transported felons and strumpets by whom that colony was originally peopled and taught them the culture of the sugar cane. Upon all these different occasions it was not the wisdom and policy but the disorder and injustice of the European government which peopled and cultivated America. In effectuation, some of the most important of these establishments, the different governments of Europe had as little merit as in projecting them. The conquest of Mexico was the project not of the Council of Spain but of a governor of Cuba and it was effectuated by the spirit of the bold adventurer to whom it was entrusted in spite of everything which that governor who soon repented of having trusted such a person could do to thwart it. The conquerors of Chile and Peru and of almost all the other Spanish settlements upon the continent of America carried out with them no other public encouragement but a general permission to make settlements and conquests in the name of the King of Spain. Those adventures were all at the private risk and expense of the adventurers. The government of Spain contributed scarce anything to any of them. That of England contributed as little towards effectuating the establishment of some of its most important colonies in North America. When those establishments were effectuated and had become so considerable as to attract the attention of the mother country, the first regulations which she made with regard to them had always in view to secure to herself the monopoly of their commerce, to confine their market and to enlarge her own at their expense and consequently rather to damp and discourage than to quicken and forward the course of their prosperity. In the different ways in which this monopoly has been exercised consist one of the most essential differences in the policy of the different European nations with regard to their colonies. The best of them all, that of England is only somewhat less illiberal and oppressive than that of any of the rest. In what way therefore has the policy of Europe contributed either to the first establishment or to the present grandeur of the colonies of America? In one way and in one way only it has contributed a good deal. Magna vera mutter. It bred and formed the men who were capable of achieving such great actions and of laying the foundation of so great an empire, and there is no other quarter of the world of which the policy is capable of forming or has ever actually and in fact formed such men. The colonies owe to the policy of Europe the education and great views of their active and enterprising founders and some of the greatest and most important of them so far as concerns their internal government owe to it scarce anything else. End of book 4 chapter 7 part c