He has every motive to render as great as possible a produce, which is thus to be almost entirely his own.But his land is commonly so extensive that, with all his own industry, and with all the industry of other people whom he can get to employ, he can seldom make it produce the tenth part of what it is capable of producing.He is eager, therefore, to collect labourers from all quarters, and to reward them with the most liberal wages.But those liberal wages, joined to the plenty and cheapness of land, soon make those labourers leave him, in order to become landlords themselves, and to reward, with equal liberality, other labourers, who soon leave them for the same reason that they left their first master.The liberal reward of labour encourages marriage.The children, during the tender years of infancy, are well fed and properly taken care of, and when they are grown up, the value of their labour greatly overpays their maintenance.
When arrived at maturity, the high price of labour, and the low price of land, enable them to establish themselves in the same manner as their fathers did before them.
In other countries, rent and profit eat up wages, and the two superior orders of people oppress the inferior one.But in new colonies the interest of the two superior orders obliges them to treat the inferior one with more generosity and humanity; at least where that inferior one is not in a state of slavery.Waste lands of the greatest natural fertility are to be had for a trifle.The increase of revenue which the proprietor, who is always the undertaker, expects from their improvement, constitutes his profit which in these circumstances is commonly very great.But this great profit cannot be made without employing the labour of other people in clearing and cultivating the land; and the disproportion between the great extent of the land and the small number of the people, which commonly takes place in new colonies, makes it difficult for him to get this labour.He does not, therefore, dispute about wages, but is willing to employ labour at any price.The high wages of labour encourage population.The cheapness and plenty of good land encourage improvement, and enable the proprietor to pay those high wages.In those wages consists almost the whole price of the land; and though they are high considered as the wages of labour, they are low considered as the price of what is so very valuable.
What encourages the progress of population and improvement encourages that of real wealth and greatness.
The progress of many of the ancient Greek colonies towards wealth and greatness seems accordingly to have been very rapid.
In the course of a century or two, several of them appear to have rivalled, and even to have surpassed their mother cities.
Syracuse and Agrigentum in Sicily, Tarentum and Locri in Italy, Ephesus and Miletus in Lesser Asia, appear by all accounts to have been at least equal to any of the cities of ancient Greece.
Though posterior in their establishment, yet all the arts of refinement, philosophy, poetry, and eloquence seem to have been cultivated as early, and to have been improved as highly in them as in any part of the mother country.The schools of the two oldest Greek philosophers, those of Thales and Pythagoras, were established, it is remarkable, not in ancient Greece, but the one in an Asiatic, the other in an Italian colony.All those colonies had established themselves in countries inhabited by savage and barbarous nations, who easily gave place to the new settlers.
They had plenty of good land, and as they were altogether independent of the mother city, they were at liberty to manage their own affairs in the way that they judged was most suitable to their own interest.
The history of the Roman colonies is by no means so brilliant.Some of them, indeed, such as Florence, have in the course of many ages, and after the fall of the mother city, grown up to be considerable states.But the progress of no one of them seems ever to have been very rapid.They were all established in conquered provinces, which in most cases had been fully inhabited before.The quantity of land assigned to each colonist was seldom very considerable, and as the colony was not independent, they were not always at liberty to manage their own affairs in the way they judged was most suitable to their own interest.
In the plenty of good land, the European colonies established in America and the West Indies resemble, and even greatly surpass, those of ancient Greece.In their dependency upon the mother state, they resemble those of ancient Rome; but their great distance from Europe has in all of them alleviated more or less the effects of this dependency.Their situation has placed them less in the view and less in the power of their mother country.In pursuing their interest their own way, their conduct has, upon many occasions, been overlooked, either because not known or not understood in Europe; and upon some occasions it has been fairly suffered and submitted to, because their distance rendered it difficult to restrain it.Even the violent and arbitrary government of Spain has, upon many occasions, been obliged to recall or soften the orders which had been given for the government of her colonies for fear of a general insurrection.The progress of all the European colonies in wealth, population, and improvement, has accordingly been very great.
