Book IV: Chapter 7

CHAPTER VII.

OF COLONIES.

PART I.

Of the Motives for Establishing New Colonies.

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 anyone
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
neighbours 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 Aeolians, the two other great tribes of the Greeks,
to Asia Minor and the islands of the Aegean sea, of which the
inhabitants sewn 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 favour 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
neighbours, 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 threw 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
jugera; about 350 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