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THE NATUKF. AND CAUSES OF
CHAP. VIII.
Of Colonies.
PART I.
Of the Motives for establishing new Colonies.
The interest which occasioned the first settlement of thedifferent European colonies in America and the West Indies ,was not altogether so plain and distinct as that which directedthe establishment of those of ancient Greece and Rome .
All the different states of ancient Greece possessed, eachof them, but a very small territory, and when the people inany one of them multiplied beyond what that territory couldeasily maintain, a part of them were sent in quest of a newhabitation in some remote and distant part of the world ; thewarlike neighbours who surrounded them on all sides, ren-
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dering’ it difficult for any of them to enlarge very much itsterritory at home. The colonies of the Dorians resortedchiefly to Italy and Sicily , which, in the times preceding thefoundation of Rome , were inhabited by barbarous and unci-vilized nations: those of the Ionians and Eolians, the, twoother great tribes of the Greeks, to Asia Minor and the islandsof the Egean Sea, of which the inhabitants seem at that timeto have been pretty much in the same state us those of Sicily and Italy . The mother city, though she considered the co-lony as a child, at all times entitled to great favour and assis-tance, and owing in return much gratitude and respect, yetconsidered it as an emancipated child, over whom she pre-tended to claim no direct authority or jurisdiction. The co-lony settled its own form of government, enacted its own laws,elected its own magistrates, and made peace or war with itsneighbours as an independent state, which had no occasionto wait for the approbation or consent of the mother city.Nothing can be more plain and distinct than the interestwhich directed every such establishment.
Rome , like most of the other ancient republics, was origi-nally founded upon an Agrarian law, which divided the pub-lic territory in a certain proportion among the different citi-zens who composed the state. The course of human affairs,by marriage, by succession, and by alienation, necessarilyderanged this original division, and frequently threw the