VI.

degradation in which it was before the late re. CHA P. coinage, the gain, or more properly the favings of the bank, in confequence of the impofition of a feignorage, would probably be very confiderable. The bank of England is the only company which fends any confiderable quantity of bullion to the mint, and the burden of the annual coinage falls entirely, or almost entirely, upon it. If this annual coinage had nothing to do but to repair the unavoidable loffes and ne ceffary wear and tear of the coin, it could feldom exceed fifty thousand or at most a hundred thoufand pounds. But when the coin is degraded below its ftandard weight, the annual coinage muft, befides this, fill up the large vacuities which exportation and the melting pot are continually making in the current coin. It was upon this account that during the ten or twelve years immediately preceding the late refor mation of the gold coin, the annual coinage amounted at an average to more than eight hundred and fifty thousand pounds. But if there had been a feignorage of four or five per cent. upon the gold coin, it would probably, even in the state in which things then were, have put an effectual stop to the bufinefs both of exportation and of the melting pot. The bank, instead of lofing every year about two and a half per cent. upon the bullion which was to be coined into more than eight hundred and fifty thousand pounds, or incurring an annual lofs of more than twenty-one thousand two hundred and fifty Z 3 pounds,

BOOK pounds, would not probably have incurred the

IV. tenth part of that lofs.

The revenue allotted by parliament for defraying the expence of the coinage is but fourteen thousand pounds a year, and the real expence which it cofts the government, or the fees of the officers of the mint, do not upon ordinary occafions, I am affured, exceed the half of that fum. The faving of so very small a sum, or even the gaining of another which could not well be much larger, are objects too inconfiderable, it may be thought, to deferve the ferious attention of government. But the faving of eighteen or twenty thousand pounds a year in cafe of an event which is not improbable, which has frequently happened before, and which is very likely to happen again, is furely an object which well deferves the serious attention even of fo great a company as the bank of England.

Some of the foregoing reafonings and obfervations might perhaps have been more properly placed in thofe chapters of the first book which treat of the origin and use of money, and of the difference between the real and the nominal price of commodities. But as the law for the encouragement of coinage derives its origin from thofe vulgar prejudices which have been introduced by the mercantile, fyftem; I judged it more proper to reserve them for this chapter. Nothing could be more agreeable to the spirit of that system than a fort of bounty upon the production of money, the very thing which, it fup

pofes,

VI.

poses, conftitutes the wealth of every nation. It CHA P. is one of its many admirable expedients for enriching the country.

CHAP. VII.

Of Colonies.

PART FIRST.

Of the Motives for establishing new Colonies.

THE

HE intereft which occafioned the firft fet- c HA P. tlement of the different European colonies

in America and the Weft Indies, was not altogether fo plain and diftinct as that which directed the establishment of thofe of ancient Greece and Rome.

All the different ftates of ancient Greece poffeffed, each of them, but a very small territory, and when the people in any one of them multiplied beyond what that territory could eafily maintain, a part of them were fent in queft of a new habitation in fome remote and distant part of the world; the warlike neighbours who furrounded them on all fides, rendering it difficult for any of them to enlarge very much its territory at home. The colonies of the Dorians reforted chiefly to Italy and Sicily, which, in the times preceding the foundation of Rome, were inhabited by barbarous and uncivilized nations : thofe

24

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BOOK

IV.

thofe of the Ionians and Eolians, the two other great tribes of the Greeks, to Afia Minor and the islands of the Egean Sea, of which the inhabitants feem at that time to have been pretty much in the fame ftate as thofe of Sicily and Italy. The mother city, though the confidered the colony as a child, at all times entitled to great favour and affiftance, and owing in return much gratitude and respect, yet confidered it as an emancipated child, over whom she pretended to claim no direct authority or jurifdiction. The colony fettled its own form of government, enacted its own laws, elected its own magiftrates, and made peace or war with its neighbours as an independent ftate, which had no occafion to wait for the approbation or confent of the mother city. Nothing can be more plain and distinct than the intereft which directed every fuch establishment.

Rome, like most of the other ancient repub. lics, 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 courfe of human affairs, by marriage, by fucceffion, and by alienation, neceffarily deranged this original divifion, and frequently threw the lands, which had been allotted for the maintenance of many different families into the poffeffion of a fingle perfon. To remedy this diforder, for fuch it was fuppofed to be, a law was made, reftricting the quantity of land which any citizen could poffefs to five hundred jugera, about three hundred and

VII.

fifty English acres. This law, however, though C HAP. we read of its having been executed upon one or two occafions, 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 cuftoms of thofe times rendered it difficult for a freeman to maintain his independency. In the prefent 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 fome little retail trade; and if he has no ftock, 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 flaves, who wrought under an overfeer, who was likewife a flave; fo 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 flaves of the rich for the benefit of their mafters, whofe 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 fubfiftence 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 divifion of lands, and reprefented that law which restricted this fort of private property as the fundamental law of the republic. The people be

came