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
labourers 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 labourers leave
him, in order to become landlords themselves,
and to reward with equal liberality other labourers,
who soon leave them for the same
reason that they left their first master. The
liberal reward of labour 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 labour greatly overpays their maintenance.
When arrived at maturity, the high
price of labour, 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 increase 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 labour 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 labour. He does not, therefore,
dispute about wages, but is willing to
employ labour at any price. The high wages
of labour 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 labour,
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 rivalled, and even to have surpassed,
their mother cities. Syracuse and Agrigentum
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 Pythagoras, 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 interest.
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 interest.
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 resemble 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 interest 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 occasion,
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 avidity 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