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pendence was a boon to them, but one of the sources of that decay from which Spain has not yet recovered. Take, again, the Dutch colonies, and we see that the dissolution of the tie between them and Holland crippled the resources of the republic, but enhanced the prosperity of the colonies.

The word colony, again, must be defined, to prevent confusion as to what has to be discussed. Colonia was the Latin word for a farm, a new settlement, or sometimes the community of immigrants. To the pure sense of farming the Romans added the idea of dependency or subjugation. We have extended the meaning of the word and its derivatives to all foreign territories, whether occupied or subjugated. In this broad sense, India, as well as New South Wales, is a colony; the Ionian Isles, as well as the two Canadas, are colonies. But it is manifest that the word so used is misused. India is a dependency, but not a colony. The Ionian Isles are what is called under a Protectorate, and are in no sense of the word a colony. England is certainly not a "mother" country to India, peopled by Asiatics; nor to the Ionian Isles, peopled by Greeks.

Again with us to colonize is the act of the Government, or of a legally constituted or chartered company; while to emigrate is the act of individuals. Emigration, again, is a term arbitrarily restricted. Under a fallacy all Europe is viewed as one country; hence the act of settling in France, Russia, or Germany, is not usually designated an act of emigration; although, inconsistently enough, to go from New Brunswick to New England, or California, is to emigrate. An emigrant, to be a colonist, must settle within British dominions; and India is as much a part of those dominions as Canada, and yet Anglo-Indians are not, but Canadians are, colonists.

To colonize, again, is a term as arbitrarily restricted. We have whole communities of English families in certain parts of France, yet no district there is colonial. We have numbers resident in Paris and St. Petersburg, yet we have not colonized those quarters of the city thus occupied. But as soon as a band of emigrants settle down in a land peopled by races not European, we claim their possessions as a colony.

The question has not only to be defined, but almost every word in it has to be cleared of the ambiguity in which it is, or may be, involved. At first thought, the expression "mother country" seems sufficiently to define the question. It distinguishes India from Australia-for the latter has sprung from the settlements formed by our countrymen, while the former existed, much in its present state, before Britain was itself a Roman colony. Yet if the fact that India has not been colonized by Saxons, while Sydney and Tasmania have, makes the former a dependency and the latter colonies, then one of the Canadas is no daughter of England. New France conquered, became British Canada in 1760. It is as much a subjugated colony as India is, and remains British simply by right of conquest and treaty. The Cape of Good Hope stands in a similar relation, except, perhaps, that the Dutch colony is more

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Anglicised than Lower Canada, still French in language and religion. Excepting our Australian and New Zealand colonies, not one of our numerous colonial possessions stands to Britain in the relation of daughter and mother. French, Spanish, Dutch, Danish, Portuguese-such are the words which point to the origin of nine out of ten of the British colonies. We have subjugated the most, and, strictly speaking, colonized the fewest of our colonial possessions.

To simplify the question, we shall, therefore, exclude India, Assam. Ceylon, our Chinese settlements, the Ionian Isles, Gibraltar, and Malta from the question to be discussed by us. We shall regard all territories in North America, not American or Russian, as British colonies, whose permanent connection with England is to be in debate. The West India Islands, the Cape, the Australian and the New Zealand settlements, we shall place under the same classification. The question will then stand thus: Is the permanent connection of the colonies in North America, in Africa, Australia, and New Zealand, with the mother country desirable?" Our answer is in the negative.

The history of ancient colonization proves the contrary. Here we must limit our field of observation, else we must take the whole world into view. We cannot follow the migrations which, beginning with the confusion of tongues at the building of the tower of Babel, gradually spread east, west, north, and south, and formed the first inhabitants of the great continents of the world. In passing we may, however, notice one great fact in favour of our negative reply. The first postdiluvian schemes of colonization, of which we have any record, began in the plains of Shinar. To effect a centralization, the renowned tower of Babel was built: to scatter mankind was the great design of the confusion of tongues. The first political act on record was to make the connection of future settlements with the mother state permanent. The greatest and most singular social resolution of which we have any knowledge, was to dissolve the bond of union. One of the first political schemes of aggrandizement was to retain all future offshoots of population in permanent adhesion to the trunk. The greatest standing miracle, the instantaneous multiplication of languages, severed that connection. Man wished what God rendered impossible.

Rome sent out her citizens in organized bands to occupy foreign territories, with the view of either cultivating land or of subjugating the inhabitants. Such parties, by emigrating, did not dissolve all connection with the mother city; and, by colonizing, were not allowed to incorporate themselves with the aboriginal population. Her principal design was, by the formation of military outposts, to subjogate neighbouring states, and extend the empire of her people. Towns, or positions of natural strength, were seized and fortified; and a third of the land was appropriated to the use of the Roman settlers. An odious aristocracy among a number of slaves was the result. An oligarchy monopolized all posts and emoluments, and the natives were subjected to a stern and humiliating despotism.

Such military colonies became a Rome in miniature in every province, a convenient outlet for the discontented citizens of the mother city, and a useful outpost for the support of military greatness. The vast dominions thus acquired afforded ample means to the senate, and afterwards to the emperors, wherewith to reward the veteran legions who colonized to make a home for themselves and bulwarks for the empire. A rapid increase of slaves was one of the causes of Roman colonization, and, subsequently, of Rome's unlamented decay. When her subjects were most numerous, out of a population of 130 millions, about a half were in a condition of slavery. Rome founded colonies in Asia and Africa; in Gaul, Germany, Spain, and Britain. Before the death of Augustus, 164 Italian and 199 foreign settlements formed the colonial empire of Rome. In her boundless selfishness and pride she wished the connection of these 363 colonies with the mother city to be permanent. The stillness of political death for ever, the curse and degradation of slavery in perpetuity, would have afflicted the world to this hour, had not the Goths, Huns, and Vandals dissolved, in torrents of blood, the connection between Rome and her colonies. The policy of Rome was to aggrandize herself at the expense of her settlements, and her system of colonization was conducted on a gigantic but vicious system. The spread of her language, the adoption of her method of administration, the diffusion of her civilization in Spain, Gaul, Germany, and Britain, were undoubtedly great results, but results that became beneficial after the connection of the colonies with the mother state was dissolved. The prevalence of one language in western Europe afforded great facilities for civilization; but that civilization would have stagnated had the ties with the Imperial City not been dissolved. Roman roads afforded the means of universal subjugation; but before the 13,500 miles of almost iron roadway could become a boon to the nations of the earth, it was necessary to dissolve the links between Rome and her colonies. The effect of Roman colonization could be beneficial only to those who performed Rome's funeral obsequies. As at Shinar, so on a larger field, Providence once more interfered, and by a more stupendous and awful revolution, unmistakably declared that the permanent connection of the mother country with her colonies is not desirable.

From Greece, bodies of men under a bold adventurer went forth to form settlements wherever they were led; and, in emigrating, forsook at once and for ever their country and their allegiance. The Greek word for a colony, apoikia, distinctly recognized this feature; without, however, implying that the natural ties of consanguinity, of language, or religion, were either to be forgotten or abjured. Notwithstanding an opposite design of Roman colonization, her "coloniæ" and "municipium;" her "coloniæ Romanæ ;' her "coloniæ Latinæ;" the "Jus Romanum," the "Jus Latii," and the "Jus Italicum," reveal the fatal incoherence of the masses Rome wished to weld together indissolubly. But when Greeks colonized they dissolved ali local and political bonds with beneficial

results. Soon after the Trojan war Greece began to swarm. With the death of her last king, Codrus, Athens began her splendid Ionian colonization in Asia Minor. The Eolians settled in the same field, and in the Egean Isles. The Dorians and Achæans proceeded westward to form settlements in Italy and Sicily. Grecian settlements were formed also on the eastern and northern shores of the Euxine, and beyond the Crimea. Natural sympathies were the sole bond between Grecian colonies and the mother states. The leaders of the emigrants became the heads of the colonies, and their successors the rulers of rising and flourishing independent states. Athens, in the pride of her power, attempted to maintain, by exaction of tribute, a permanent connection. But, in general, independence of the mother states was both asserted and conceded. Within a period of two centuries, Syracuse and Agrigentum in Sicily; Tarentum and Locri in Italy; Ephesus, Smyrna, and Miletus in Asia, besides numerous insular settlements in adjoining seas, marked the course of classic emigration. In power, opulence, and refinement, these colonies soon rivalled the parent states. According to some writers, the Ionian settlements were the real nursery of Grecian literature. Hecatæus, the historian, was a native of Miletus, and Anacreon of Teos. Herodotus wrote in the Ionian dialect of the colonists. The earliest Greek philosophers were of the Ionian school, and were natives of colonies. Pythagoras settled at Croton, a Greek settlement in Italy, and established the Italian or Doric school. The school of Thales was also of colonial origin.

Out of the twelve flourishing states in Asia Minor, formed on the principle of independence of the mother states, we may take Miletus as a specimen of prosperity. Herself a colony, she became the founder of seventy-five towns or cities, which rivalled Greece in arts, luxury, and refinement. Lycia, with an area of some two millions of acres only, had thirty-six cities in the time of Herodotus. Pliny asserts that at one time it could boast of not less than seventy cities. The ruins of some of them still attest the magnificence of Grecian colonization. After some two hundred years of connection of the East and West Indies with Britain, these dependencies have nothing to show that can stand comparison with the magnificent edifices which existed at Aphrodisias, Arycanda, Calynda, Cadyanda, Mylosa, Myra, Patara, Phellus, Pinare, Sidyma, Stratonicia, Tlos,

and Xanthus.

Take, again, the insignificant island of Ægina, which, from a sterile rock, was transformed into a hive of industry. On an area of some twelve square miles, its slave population has been estimated at about half a million. Its fleets came laden with provisions from the shores of the Black Sea, the valley of the Nile, and from Cyrene. It had mercantile factories in Egypt. Its wealth and warlike resources, inconceivable to even Saxon colonizers, were sources of grave apprehensions to larger but weaker states. The sea-gull had made it a guano rock; Grecian independent colonization converted it into a vast emporium of commerce.

Look at Asia Minor, with its great extent of sea-board, its numerous and beautiful salt and fresh water lakes, with its rapid growth in opulence and power, in art and literature, with its colonial settlements formed by the emigrants of some thirty different nations, and you have a country and a population resembling in many respects the once United States of America, but differing in one-in this, that the Ionian colonies required no Washington to develop their resources, and to make them a great, powerful, and happy community.

From the banks of the Indus came the first inhabitants of Ethiopia, who in their continued migrations along the Nile peopled Lower Egypt; and, coasting along Syria, formed colonies in Phoenicia and Greece. Under Joshua and the Hebrew Judges, the Phoenicians and the Canaanitish races gradually spread along the sea-board of the Mediterranean. From Cyprus and Rhodes they sent out bands of emigrants to Greece, Sicily, Sardinia, Africa, and Spain, and probably to Britain. Hamilcar and Hannibal led colonists from Carthage into Spain. These Phoenician settlements rose into independent and sovereign states. The principle of their colonization was substantially the same as that of the Greeks. Bound by no political ties, Carthage was a friendly rival, but no foe to her mother city, Tyre. The daughter sent her annually a vessel freighted with rich presents, with votive offerings, the firstfruits of her revenues, and tenth of the spoils taken in war. Cambyses was thwarted in his designs because his Phoenician sailors shrank from the sacrilege of war upon Tyre; while English sailors in American frigates fought against England, which wished to make the connection between the colony and the mother country permanent. Carthage, in reciprocation, opened an asylum to the Tyrians when their city was besieged by Alexander; while the late United States open an asylum to England's bitterest foes in Ireland. In the one, no permanent political connection was sought or allowed; in the other, a Walpole with a Stamp Act, a Rockingham with the principle of compulsory taxation, a Lord North with tax on glass, paper, and tea, raised up a Washington, a Lafayette, French sympathies, Irish fraternization, and Russian alliances-all against the mother country.

The principal field of Phoenician colonization was in North Africa, where Utica, Leptis, Hippo, and Carthage rose into great commercial importance. Passing over their European settlements, we notice Carthage, the finest result of ancient colonization on free and independent principles. The life of this world-famous city was free trade, which embraced the limits of the known world, and of worlds known only to Phoenician sailors and merchants. All her citizens, like the Dutch at Amsterdam, regarded trade as no dishonour. Her princes were merchants, her great men were manufacturers. Her citizens retired, like their modern imitators in Britain, to their parks and country seats to pass the evening of life in rural enjoyments. For war they subsidized foreigners. Greece contributed her bands of sturdy warriors. The Balearic Isles furnished them

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