In vain do we look among ancient nations, for examples of colonies, established on principles of policy, similar to those of the colonies of Great Britain. England did not, like the republics of Greece, oblige her sons to form distant communities, in the wilds of the earth. Like Rome, she did not give lands as a gratuity to soldiers, who became a military force, for the defence of her frontiers: she did not, like Carthage, subdue the neighbouring states, in order to acquire an exclusive right to their commerce. No conquest was ever attempted over the aborigines of America. Their right to the soil was disregarded, and their country looked

revolution; for the most southern states continued the importation, till it was prohibited, in 1808.

The discovery of America was also the occasion of a great increase of piracy. Hordes of lawless men associated, and took their station in some of the uninhabited spots of the new world, where they gave themselves up to all manner of licentiousness. They lived by hunting swine and cattle, which abounded in the mountains, and acquired the name of Buccaneers, from the practice of preserving their beef and pork, called in French boucane. After living in this manner, some became cultivators; but others betook themselves to piracy. They fortified themselves in Tortuga, and, sallying forth, in small companies, sought for booty. This was divided with the most scrupulous justice. Though they violated that virtue with others, they observed it among themselves. After their plunder was expended, they went in quest of more. To these enemies of the human race, frequent accessions were made from the outcasts of all nations. They became formidable, and attacked several Spanish towns. In 1697, they took Carthagena, and property to the value of seven or eight millions of dollars. They also extended their depredations along the American coast, from Maine to Carolina, especially in the southern extreme. Landing in several places, they buried their ill-gotten wealth, in spots known only to themselves. To dig for this hidden treasure, was the amusement of several credulous inhabitants, for a considerable part of the eighteenth century. The pirates, at one time, had the command of the gulf of Florida, and in it made many valuable prizes. They almost ruined the trade to the West Indies, and, for a short time, nearly blocked up the port of Charleston, in South Carolina. They had two contiguous harbours, one in cape Fear river, North Carolina, and another at New Providence, from which they sallied forth, and made many prizes. Their rendezvous, in the latter place, was broke up by captain Ro gers; in the former, in the year 1718, by governor Johnson and colonel Rhett, of South Carolina. Many years passed away, and the strong arm of government was vigorously exerted, before the American seas were cleared of freebooters.

upon as a waste, open to the occupancy and use of other nations. It was considered that settlements might be there formed, for the advantage of those who should migrate thither, as well as of the mother country. The rights and interests of the native proprietors were, all this time, deemed of no account.

What was the extent of obligations, by which colonies, planted under these circumstances, were bound to the mother country, is a subject of nice discussion. Whether these arose from nature and the constitution, or from compact, is a question necessarily connected with many others. While the friends of union contended, that the king of England had a property in the soil of America, by virtue of a right derived from prior discovery, and that his subjects, by migrating from one part of his dominions to another, did not lessen their obligations, to obey the supreme power of the nation, it was inferred, that the emigrants to English America continued to owe the same obedience to the king and parliament, as if they had never quitted the land of their nativity. But if, as others contended, the Indians were the only lawful proprietors of the country, in which their Creator had placed them, and they sold their right to emigrants, who, as men, had a right to leave their native country, and as subjects, had obtained chartered permission to do so, it follows, that the obligations of the colonists, to their parent state, must have resulted more from compact, and the prospect of reciprocal advantage, than from natural obligation. The latter opinions seem to have been adopted by several of the colonists, particularly in New England. Sundry persons of influence in that country always held, that birth was no necessary cause of subjection; for that the subject of any prince or state had a natural right to remove to any other state or quarter of the globe; especially if deprived of liberty of conscience; and that, upon such removal, his subjection ceased.

The validity of charters, about which the emigrants to America were universally anxious, rests upon the same foundation. If the right of the sovereigns of England, to

the soil of America, were ideal, and contrary to natural justice, and if no one can give what is not his own, their charters were on several accounts a nullity. In the eye of reason and philosophy, they could give no right to American territory. The only validity, which such grants could have, was, that the grantees had from their sovereign, a permission to depart from their native country, and negotiate with the proprietors for the purchase of the soil, and thereupon to acquire a power of jurisdiction subject to his crown. These were the opinions of many of the settlers in New England. They looked upon their charters as a voluntary compact, between their sovereign and themselves, by which they were bound neither to be subject to, nor seek protection from any other prince; nor to make any laws repugnant to those of England: but did not consider them as inferring an obligation of obedience to a parliament, in which they were unrepresented. The prospects of advantage, which the emigrants to America expected from the protection of their native sovereign, and the prospect of aggrandizement, which their native sovereign expected from the extension of his empire, made the former very solicitous for charters, and the latter very ready to grant them. Neither reasoned clearly on their nature, nor well understood their extent. In less than eighty years, fifteen hundred miles of the sea coast were granted away; and so little did they who gave, or they who accepted of charters, understand their own transactions, that in several cases the same ground was covered by contradictory grants; and with an absurdity that can only be palliated by the ignorance of the parties, some of the grants extended to the South Sea, over a country whose breadth is yet unknown, and which to this day is unexplored.

Ideal as these charters were, they answered a temporary purpose. The colonists reposed confidence in them, and were excited to industry on their credit. They also deterred foreign European powers from disturbing them, because, agreeably to the late law of nations, relative to the appropriation of newly-discovered heathen countries, they inferred the protection of the sovereign who gave them. They also

opposed a barrier to open and gross encroachments of the mother country on the rights of the colonists. A particular detail of these is not now necessary. Some general remarks may, nevertheless, be made on the early periods of colonial history, as they cast light on the late revolution. Long before the declaration of independence, several of the colonies, on different occasions, declared, that they ought not to be taxed, but by their own provincial assemblies; and that they considered subjection to acts of a British parliament, in which they had no representation, as a grievance. It is also worthy of being noted, that of the thirteen colonies, which have been lately formed into states, no one, Georgia excepted, was settled at the expense of government. Towards the settlement of that southern frontier, considerable sums have at different times been granted by parliament; but the twelve more northern Atlantic provinces have been wholly settled by private adventurers, without any advances from the national treasury. It does not appear, from existing records, that any compensation for their lands was ever made to the aborigines of America, by the crown or parliament of England; but policy, as well as justice, led the colonists to purchase and pay for what they occupied. This was done in almost every settlement; and they prospered most, who, by justice and kindness, took the greatest pains to conciliate the good will of the natives.

It is in vain to look for well-balanced constitutions, in the early periods of colonial history. Till the revolution, in the year 1688, a period subsequent to the settlement of the colonies, England herself can scarcely be said to have had a fixed constitution. At that eventful era, the line was first drawn, between the privileges of subjects and the prerogatives of sovereigns. It is sufficient in general to observe, that in less than eighty years from the first permanent English settlement in North America, the two original patents, granted to the Plymouth and London companies, were divided, and subdivided, into twelve distinct and unconnected provinces; and in fifty years more a thirteenth,

by the name of Georgia, was added to the southern extreme of previous establishments.

To each of these, after various changes, there was ultimately granted a form of government, resembling, in its most. essential parts, as far as local circumstances would permit, that which was established in the parent state. A minute description of constitutions, which no longer exist, would be both tedious and unprofitable. In general, it may be observed, that agreeably to the spirit of the British constitution, considerable provision was made for the liberties of the inhabitants. The prerogatives of royalty, and dependence on the mother country, were but feebly impressed, on the colonial forms of government. In some of the provinces, the inhabitants chose their governors, and all other public officers; and their legislatures were under little or no control. In others, the crown delegated most of its power to particular persons, who were also invested with the property of the soil. In those which were most immediately dependent on the king, he exercised no higher prerogatives over the colonists, than over their fellow-subjects, in England; and his power over the provincial legislative assemblies was not greater, than what he was constitutionally vested with, over the house of commons, in the mother country. From the acquiescence of the parent state, the spirit of her constitution, and daily experience, the colonists grew up in a belief, that their local assemblies stood in the same relation to them, as the parliament of Great Britain to the inhabitants of that island. The benefits of legislation were conferred on both, only through these constitutional channels.

It is remarkable, that though the English possessions in America were far inferior in natural riches to those which fell to the lot of other Europeans, yet the security of property and of liberty, derived from the English constitution, gave them a consequence to which the colonies of other powers, though settled at an earlier day, have not yet attained. The wise and liberal policy of England towards her colonies, during the first hundred and fifty years after their settlement, had a considerable influence in exalting them to