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 St 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 honour 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,
stript 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 governments, which peopled and
cultivated America.
In effectuating 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 every thing which
that governor, who soon repented of having
trusted such a person, could do to thwart it.
The conquerors of Chili 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 any thing
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,
consists 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 virûm mater! 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 any thing
else.