Chapter Of the Motives for Establishing New 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 it the manners and customs
  of those times rendered it difficult for a freeman to maintain his
  independency. In the present times, though a poor man has no land of his
  own, if he has a little stock, he may either farm the lands of another, or
  he may carry on some little retail trade; and if he has no stock, he may
  find employment either as a country labourer, or as an artificer. But
  among the ancient Romans, the lands of the rich were all cultivated by
  slaves, who wrought under an overseer, who was likewise a slave; so that a
  poor freeman had little chance of being employed either as a farmer or as
  a labourer. All trades and manufactures, too, even the retail trade, were
  carried on by the slaves of the rich for the benefit of their masters,
  whose wealth, authority, and protection, made it difficult for a poor
  freeman to maintain the competition against them. The citizens, therefore,
  who had no land, had scarce any other means of subsistence but the
  bounties of the candidates at the annual elections. The tribunes, when
  they had a mind to animate the people against the rich and the great, put
  them in mind of the ancient divisions of lands, and represented that law
  which restricted this sort of private property as the fundamental law of
  the republic. The people became clamorous to get land, and the rich and
  the great, we may believe, were perfectly determined not to give them any
  part of theirs. To satisfy them in some measure, therefore, they
  frequently proposed to send out a new colony. But conquering Rome was,
  even upon such occasions, under no necessity of turning out her citizens
  to seek their fortune, if one may so, through the wide world, without
  knowing where they were to settle. She assigned them lands generally in
  the conquered provinces of Italy, where, being within the dominions of the
  republic, they could never form any independent state, but were at best
  but a sort of corporation, which, though it had the power of enacting
  bye-laws for its own government, was at all times subject to the
  correction, jurisdiction, and legislative authority of the mother city.
  The sending out a colony of this kind not only gave some satisfaction to
  the people, but often established a sort of garrison, too, in a newly
  conquered province, of which the obedience might otherwise have been
  doubtful. A Roman colony, therefore, whether we consider the nature of the
  establishment itself, or the motives for making it, was altogether
  different from a Greek one. The words, accordingly, which in the original
  languages denote those different establishments, have very different
  meanings. The Latin word (colonia) signifies simply a plantation. The
  Greek word (apoixia), on the contrary, signifies a separation of dwelling,
  a departure from home, a going out of the house. But though the Roman
  colonies were, in many respects, different from the Greek ones, the
  interest which prompted to establish them was equally plain and distinct.
  Both institutions derived their origin, either from irresistible
  necessity, or from clear and evident utility.

  The establishment of the European colonies in America and the West Indies
  arose from no necessity; and though the utility which has resulted from
  them has been very great, it is not altogether so clear and evident. It
  was not understood at their first establishment, and was not the motive,
  either of that establishment, or of the discoveries which gave occasion to
  it; and the nature, extent, and limits of that utility, are not, perhaps,
  well understood at this day.

  The Venetians, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, carried on a
  very advantageous commerce in spiceries and other East India goods, which
  they distributed among the other nations of Europe. They purchased them
  chiefly in Egypt, at that time under the dominion of the Mamelukes, the
  enemies of the Turks, of whom the Venetians were the enemies; and this
  union of interest, assisted by the money of Venice, formed such a
  connexion as gave the Venetians almost a monopoly of the trade.

  The great profits of the Venetians tempted the avidity of the Portuguese.
  They had been endeavouring, during the course of the fifteenth century, to
  find out by sea a way to the countries from which the Moors brought them
  ivory and gold dust across the desert. They discovered the Madeiras, the
  Canaries, the Azores, the Cape de Verd islands, the coast of Guinea, that
  of Loango, Congo, Angola, and Benguela, and, finally, the Cape of Good
  Hope. They had long wished to share in the profitable traffic of the
  Venetians, and this last discovery opened to them a probable prospect of
  doing so. In 1497, Vasco de Gamo sailed from the port of Lisbon with a
  fleet of four ships, and, after a navigation of eleven months, arrived
  upon the coast of Indostan; and thus completed a course of discoveries
  which had been pursued with great steadiness, and with very little
  interruption, for near a century together.

  Some years before this, while the expectations of Europe were in suspense
  about the projects of the Portuguese, of which the success appeared yet to
  be doubtful, a Genoese pilot formed the yet more daring project of sailing
  to the East Indies by the west. The situation of those countries was at
  that time very imperfectly known in Europe. The few European travellers
  who had been there, had magnified the distance, perhaps through simplicity
  and ignorance; what was really very great, appearing almost infinite to
  those who could not measure it; or, perhaps, in order to increase somewhat
  more the marvellous of their own adventures in visiting regions so
  immensely remote from Europe. The longer the way was by the east, Columbus
  very justly concluded, the shorter it would be by the west. He proposed,
  therefore, to take that way, as both the shortest and the surest, and he
  had the good fortune to convince Isabella of Castile of the probability of
  his project. He sailed from the port of Palos in August 1492, near five
  years before the expedition of Vasco de Gamo set out from Portugal; and,
  after a voyage of between two and three months, discovered first some of
  the small Bahama or Lucyan islands, and afterwards the great island of St.
  Domingo.

  But the countries which Columbus discovered, either in this or in any of
  his subsequent voyages, had no resemblance to those which he had gone in
  quest of. Instead of the wealth, cultivation, and populousness of China
  and Indostan, he found, in St. Domingo, and in all the other parts of the
  new world which he ever visited, nothing but a country quite covered with
  wood, uncultivated, and inhabited only by some tribes of naked and
  miserable savages. He was not very willing, however, to believe that they
  were not the same with some of the countries described by Marco Polo, the
  first European who had visited, or at least had left behind him any
  description of China or the East Indies; and a very slight resemblance,
  such as that which he found between the name of Cibao, a mountain in St.
  Domingo, and that of Cipange, mentioned by Marco Polo, was frequently
  sufficient to make him return to this favourite prepossession, though
  contrary to the clearest evidence. In his letters to Ferdinand and
  Isabella, he called the countries which he had discovered the Indies. He
  entertained no doubt but that they were the extremity of those which had
  been described by Marco Polo, and that they were not very distant from the
  Ganges, or from the countries which had been conquered by Alexander. Even
  when at last convinced that they were different, he still flattered
  himself that those rich countries were at no great distance; and in a
  subsequent voyage, accordingly, went in quest of them along the coast of
  Terra Firma, and towards the Isthmus of Darien.

  In consequence of this mistake of Columbus, the name of the Indies has
  stuck to those unfortunate countries ever since; and when it was at last
  clearly discovered that the new were altogether different from the old
  Indies, the former were called the West, in contradistinction to the
  latter, which were called the East Indies.

  It was of importance to Columbus, however, that the countries which he had
  discovered, whatever they were, should be represented to the court of
  Spain as of very great consequence; and, in what constitutes the real
  riches of every country, the animal and vegetable productions of the soil,
  there was at that time nothing which could well justify such a
  representation of them.

  The cori, something between a rat and a rabbit, and supposed by Mr Buffon
  to be the same with the aperea of Brazil, was the largest viviparous
  quadruped in St. Domingo. This species seems never to have been very
  numerous; and the dogs and cats of the Spaniards are said to have long ago
  almost entirely extirpated it, as well as some other tribes of a still
  smaller size. These, however, together with a pretty large lizard, called
  the ivana or iguana, constituted the principal part of the animal food
  which the land afforded.

  The vegetable food of the inhabitants, though, from their want of
  industry, not very abundant, was not altogether so scanty. It consisted in
  Indian corn, yams, potatoes, bananas, etc., plants which were then
  altogether unknown in Europe, and which have never since been very much
  esteemed in it, or supposed to yield a sustenance equal to what is drawn
  from the common sorts of grain and pulse, which have been cultivated in
  this part of the world time out of mind.

  The cotton plant, indeed, afforded the material of a very important
  manufacture, and was at that time, to Europeans, undoubtedly the most
  valuable of all the vegetable productions of those islands. But though, in
  the end of the fifteenth century, the muslins and other cotton goods of
  the East Indies were much esteemed in every part of Europe, the cotton
  manufacture itself was not cultivated in any part of it. Even this
  production, therefore, could not at that time appear in the eyes of
  Europeans to be of very great consequence.

  Finding nothing, either in the animals or vegetables of the newly
  discovered countries which could justify a very advantageous
  representation of them, Columbus turned his view towards their minerals;
  and in the richness of their productions of this third kingdom, he
  flattered himself he had found a full compensation for the insignificancy
  of those of the other two. The little bits of gold with which the
  inhabitants ornamented their dress, and which, he was informed, they
  frequently found in the rivulets and torrents which fell from the
  mountains, were sufficient to satisfy him that those mountains abounded
  with the richest gold mines. St. Domingo, therefore, was represented as a
  country abounding with gold, and upon that account (according to the
  prejudices not only of the present times, but of those times), an
  inexhaustible source of real wealth to the crown and kingdom of Spain.
  When Columbus, upon his return from his first voyage, was introduced with
  a sort of triumphal honours to the sovereigns of Castile and Arragon, the
  principal productions of the countries which he had discovered were
  carried in solemn procession before him. The only valuable part of them
  consisted in some little fillets, bracelets, and other ornaments of gold,
  and in some bales of cotton. The rest were mere objects of vulgar wonder
  and curiosity; some reeds of an extraordinary size, some birds of a very
  beautiful plumage, and some stuffed skins of the huge alligator and
  manati; all of which were preceded by six or seven of the wretched
  natives, whose singular colour and appearance added greatly to the novelty
  of the show.

  In consequence of the representations of Columbus, the council of Castile
  determined to take possession of the countries of which the inhabitants
  were plainly incapable of defending themselves. The pious purpose of
  converting them to Christianity sanctified the injustice of the project.
  But the hope of finding treasures of gold there was the sole motive which
  prompted to undertake it; and to give this motive the greater weight, it
  was proposed by Columbus, that the half of all the gold and silver that
  should be found there, should belong to the crown. This proposal was
  approved of by the council.

  As long as the whole, or the greater part of the gold which the first
  adventurers imported into Europe was got by so very easy a method as the
  plundering of the defenceless natives, it was not perhaps very difficult
  to pay even this heavy tax; but when the natives were once fairly stript
  of all that they had, which, in St. Domingo, and in all the other
  countries discovered by Columbus, was done completely in six or eight
  years, and when, in order to find more, it had become necessary to dig for
  it in the mines, there was no longer any possibility of paying this tax.
  The rigorous exaction of it, accordingly, first occasioned, it is said,
  the total abandoning of the mines of St. Domingo, which have never been
  wrought since. It was soon reduced, therefore, to a third; then to a
  fifth; afterwards to a tenth; and at last to a twentieth part of the gross
  produce of the gold mines. The tax upon silver continued for a long time
  to be a fifth of the gross produce. It was reduced to a tenth only in the
  course of the present century. But the first adventurers do not appear to
  have been much interested about silver. Nothing less precious than gold
  seemed worthy of their attention.

  All the other enterprizes of the Spaniards in the New World, subsequent to
  those of Columbus, seem to have been prompted by the same motive. It was
  the sacred thirst of gold that carried Ovieda, Nicuessa, and Vasco Nugnes
  de Balboa, to the Isthmus of Darien; that carried Cortes to Mexico,
  Almagro and Pizarro to Chili and Peru. When those adventurers arrived upon
  any unknown coast, their first inquiry was always if there was any gold to
  be found there; and according to the information which they received
  concerning this particular, they determined either to quit the country or
  to settle in it.

  Of all those expensive and uncertain projects, however, which bring
  bankruptcy upon the greater part of the people who engage in them, there
  is none, perhaps, more perfectly ruinous than the search after new silver
  and gold mines. It is, perhaps, the most disadvantageous lottery in the
  world, or the one in which the gain of those who draw the prizes bears the
  least proportion to the loss of those who draw the blanks; for though the
  prizes are few, and the blanks many, the common price of a ticket is the
  whole fortune of a very rich man. Projects of mining, instead of replacing
  the capital employed in them, together with the ordinary profits of stock,
  commonly absorb both capital and profit. They are the projects, therefore,
  to which, of all others, a prudent lawgiver, who desired to increase the
  capital of his nation, would least choose to give any extraordinary
  encouragement, or to turn towards them a greater share of that capital
  than what would go to them of its own accord. Such, in reality, is the
  absurd confidence which almost all men have in their own good fortune,
  that wherever there is the least probability of success, too great a share
  of it is apt to go to them of its own accord.

  But though the judgment of sober reason and experience concerning such
  projects has always been extremely unfavourable, that of human avidity has
  commonly been quite otherwise. The same passion which has suggested to so
  many people the absurd idea of the philosopher’s stone, has suggested to
  others the equally absurd one of immense rich mines of gold and silver.
  They did not consider that the value of those metals has, in all ages and
  nations, arisen chiefly from their scarcity, and that their scarcity has
  arisen from the very small quantities of them which nature has anywhere
  deposited in one place, from the hard and intractable substances with
  which she has almost everywhere surrounded those small quantities, and
  consequently from the labour and expense which are everywhere necessary in
  order to penetrate, and get at them. They flattered themselves that veins
  of those metals might in many places be found, as large and as abundant as
  those which are commonly found of lead, or copper, or tin, or iron. The
  dream of Sir Waiter Raleigh, concerning the golden city and country of El
  Dorado, may satisfy us, that even wise men are not always exempt from such
  strange delusions. More than a hundred years after the death of that great
  man, the Jesuit Gumila was still convinced of the reality of that
  wonderful country, and expressed, with great warmth, and, I dare say, with
  great sincerity, how happy he should be to carry the light of the gospel
  to a people who could so well reward the pious labours of their
  missionary.

  In the countries first discovered by the Spaniards, no gold and silver
  mines are at present known which are supposed to be worth the working. The
  quantities of those metals which the first adventurers are said to have
  found there, had probably been very much magnified, as well as the
  fertility of the mines which were wrought immediately after the first
  discovery. What those adventurers were reported to have found, however,
  was sufficient to inflame the avidity of all their countrymen. Every
  Spaniard who sailed to America expected to find an El Dorado. Fortune,
  too, did upon this what she has done upon very few other occasions. She
  realized in some measure the extravagant hopes of her votaries; and in the
  discovery and conquest of Mexico and Peru (of which the one happened about
  thirty, and the other about forty, years after the first expedition of
  Columbus), she presented them with something not very unlike that
  profusion of the precious metals which they sought for.

  A project of commerce to the East Indies, therefore, gave occasion to the
  first discovery of the West. A project of conquest gave occasion to all
  the establishments of the Spaniards in those newly discovered countries.
  The motive which excited them to this conquest was a project of gold and
  silver mines; and a course of accidents which no human wisdom could
  foresee, rendered this project much more successful than the undertakers
  had any reasonable grounds for expecting.

  The first adventurers of all the other nations of Europe who attempted to
  make settlements in America, were animated by the like chimerical views;
  but they were not equally successful. It was more than a hundred years
  after the first settlement of the Brazils, before any silver, gold, or
  diamond mines, were discovered there. In the English, French, Dutch, and
  Danish colonies, none have ever yet been discovered, at least none that
  are at present supposed to be worth the working. The first English
  settlers in North America, however, offered a fifth of all the gold and
  silver which should be found there to the king, as a motive for granting
  them their patents. In the patents of Sir Waiter Raleigh, to the London
  and Plymouth companies, to the council of Plymouth, etc. this fifth was
  accordingly reserved to the crown. To the expectation of finding gold and
  silver mines, those first settlers, too, joined that of discovering a
  north-west passage to the East Indies. They have hitherto been
  disappointed in both.