every year about two and a half per cent. upon the bullion which was to be coined into more than eight hundred and fifty thousand pounds, or incurring an annual lofs of more than twenty-one thoufand two hundred and fifty pounds, would not probably have incurred the tenth part of that lofs.

*

THE revenue allotted by parliament for defraying the expence of the coinage is but fourteen thousand pounds a year, and the real expence which it cofts the government, or the fees of the officers of the mint, do not upon ordinary occafions, I am affured, exceed the half of that fum. The faving of fo very fmall a fum, or even the gaining of another which could not well be much larger, are objects too inconfiderable, it may be thought, to deserve the ferious attention of government. But the faving of eighteen or twenty thousand pounds a year in cafe of an event which is not improbable, which has frequently happened before, and which is very likely to happen again, is furely an object which well deserves the serious attention even of fo great a company as the bank of England.

SOME of the foregoing reafonings and obfervations might perhaps have been more properly placed in thofe chapters of the first book which treat of the origin and use of money, and of the difference between the real and the nominal price of commodities. But as the law for the encouragement of coinage derives its origin from thofe vulgar prejudices which have been introduced by the mercantile fyftem; I judged it more proper to reserve them for this chapter. Nothing could be more agreeable to the fpirit of that system than a fort of bounty upon the production of money, the very thing which, it fuppofes, conftitutes the wealth of every nation. It is one of its many admirable expedients for enriching the country.

U 2

BOOK
IV.

TH

CHAP. VII.

Of Colonies.

PART FIRST.

Of the motives for establishing new Colonies.

HE intereft which occafioned the first fettlement of the different European colonies in America and the Weft Indies, was not altogether fo plain and diftinct as that which directed the establishment of thofe of ancient Greece and Rome.

ALL the different ftates of ancient Greece poffeffed, each of them, but a very fmall territory, and when the people in any one of them multiplied beyond what that territory could easily maintain, a part of them were fent in queft of a new habitation in some remote and diftant part of the world; the warlike neighbours who furrounded them on all fides, rendering it difficult for The any of them to enlarge very much its territory at home. colonies of the Dorians reforted 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 Eolians, the two other great tribes of the Greeks, to Afia Minor and the islands of the Egean Sea, of which the inhabitants feem at that time to have been pretty much in the fame ftate as thofe of Sicily and Italy. The mother city, though the confidered the colony as a child, at all times entitled to great favour and affiftance, and owing in return much gratitude and respect, yet confidered it as an emancipated child over whom the pretended to claim no direct authority or jurifdiction. The colony fettled its own form of government, enacted its own laws, elected its own magiftrates, and made peace or war with its neighbours as an independant ftate which had no occafion to wait for the approbation

or

VII.

or consent of the mother city. Nothing can be more plain and CHAP. diftinct than the interest which directed every fuch establishment.

ROME, like most of the other ancient republicks, was originally founded upon an Agrarian law, which divided the publick territory in a certain proportion among the different citizens who compofed. the ftate. The courfe of human affairs, by marriage, by fucceffion, and by alienation, neceffarily deranged this original divifion, and frequently threw the lands, which had been allotted for the maintenance of many different families into the poffeffion of a single perfon. To remedy this disorder, for fuch it was fuppofed to be, a law was made, reftricting the quantity of land which any citizen could poffefs to five hundred jugera, about three hundred and fifty English acres. This law, however, though we read of its having been executed upon one or two occafions, was either neglected or evaded, and the inequality of fortunes went on continually increafing. The greater part of the citizens, had no land, and without it the manners and cuftoms of thofe times rendered it difficult for a freeman to maintain his independency. In the present times, though a poor man has no land of his own, if he has a little ftock, he may either farm the lands of another, or he may carry on fome little retail trade; and if he has no stock, he may find employment either as a country labourer, or as an artificer. But, among the ancient Romans, the lands of the rich were all cultivated by flaves, who wrought under an overfeer, who was likewife a flave; fo that a poor freeman had little chance of being employed either as a farmer or as a labourer. All trades and manufactures too, even the retail trade, were carried on by the flaves of the rich for the benefit of their mafters, whose wealth, authority, and protection made it difficult for a poor freeman to maintain the competition against them. The citizens, therefore, who had no land, had fcarce any other means of fubfiftence but the bounties of the candidates at the annual elections.

The

IV.

BOOK The tribunes, when they had a mind to animate the people against the rich and the great, put them in mind of the antient divifion of lands, and represented that law which restricted this fort of private property as the fundamental law of the republick. The people became clamorous to get land, and the rich and the great, we may believe, were perfectly determined not to give them any part of theirs. To fatisfy them in fome measure, therefore, they frequently proposed to send out a new colony. But conquering Rome was, even upon fuch occafions, under no neceflity of turning out her citizens to feek their fortune, if one may fay fo, through the wide world, without knowing where they were to fettle. She affigned them lands generally in the conquered provinces of Italy, where, being within the dominions of the republick, they could never form any independent state; but were at best but a sort of corporation, which, though it had the power of enacting bye-laws for its own government, was at all times fubject to the correction, jurisdiction, and legislative authority of the mother city. The fending out a colony of this kind, not only gave fome fatisfaction to the people, but often established a fort of garrison too in a newly conquered province, of which the obedience might otherwife have been doubtful. A Roman colony, therefore, whether we confider 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) fignifies fimply a plantation. The Greek word (anoxia) on the contrary, fignifies a separation of dwelling, a departure from home, a going out of the house. But, though the Roman colonies were in many refpects different from the Greek ones, the intereft which prompted to establish them was equally plain and distinct. Both inftitutions derived their origin either from irresistible neceffity, or from clear and evident utility.

THE

VII.

THE establishment of the European colonies in America and the CHAP. West Indies arofe from no neceffity: and though the utility which has refulted from them has been very great, it is not altogether fo 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 occafion to it, and the nature, extent, and limits of that utility are not, perhaps, well understood at this day.

THE Venetians, during the fourteenth and fifteenth 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 Mammeluks, the enemies of the Turks, of whom the Venetians were the enemies; and this union of intereft, affifted by the money of Venice, formed fuch a connection as gave the Venetians almoft a monopoly of the trade.

THE great profits of the Venetians tempted the avidity of the Portuguese. They had been endeavouring, during the course of the fifteenth century, to find out by fea a way to the countries from which the Moors brought them ivory and gold duft across the Defart. They discovered the Madeiras, the Canaries, the Azores, the Cape de Verd islands, the coaft of Guinea, that of Loango, Congo, Angola, and Benguela, and, finally, the Cape of Good Hope. They had long wished to share in the profitable traffick of the Venetians, and this laft difcovery opened to them a probable profpect of doing fo. In 1497, Vafco de Gama failed from the port of Lisbon with a fleet of four fhips, and, after a navigation of eleven months, arrived upon the coaft of Indoftan, and thus completed a courfe of discoveries which had been purfued with great steadiness, and with: very little interruption, for near a century together.

SOME