I • Colma,' (Latin calonia, Greek c'ordixia) signifies a body of settlers removed to a distance from their native coun try. In early ages, when agriculture formed almost the sole object of productive industry, a change of this des cription was accounted applicable to those only who might be induced to remove for the purpose of tillage. Hence the derivation of the Latin name colonia from cok. That name has passed into most European languages, although the more general and comprehensive term in Greek, would have been the fit appellation of modern settle ments, many of which were formed with other views than those of agriculture. We shall proceed to treat at some length of the history of colonies, particularly those of modern times, and shall, for the sake of perspi cuity, arrange the multiform details of the subject under specific heads.
Ancient Colonies.—The earliest colonies of which the history is authenticated, were those of Greece. They owed their origin, neither to schemes of conquest, nor to speculations of commerce, but to the plain and direct conviction of the impracticability of subsisting in the territory of the mother country. Though Greece, in her best days, had by no means a population beyond the resources of her soil when tolerably cultivated, the art of tillage was, in the early ages, so rude and unprodue ,•ive, as to impress the inhabitants with the belief, that the alternative of expatriation was indispensible. Of the manner of conducting those early emigrations, we have no regular accounts ; they are known chiefly by the rapid progress which the settlements had made at the begin ning of the ascertained period of Grecian history. By this time colonies of Dorians had been long established in Italy and Sicily ; while those of the Ionians and iEolians had occupied the Islands of the /Egean Sea and the mari time part of Asia Minor. It was in these distant settle ments that the early philosophers, poets, and political sages of Greece made their appearance. So quick an advance in improvement affords a remarkable example of a truth to which we shall presently advert—the strik ing advantages of a colonial establishment in facilitating the progress of arts and sciences. In the case of the Greeks, these advantages were not counteracted by any assumption of controul on the part of the parent state. An amicable intercourse was kept up between the kind red tribes, but the colony was neither involved in the wars of the mother country, nor restricted from making her separate interest the object of all her political arrangements. The formation of these colonies arose, as in the case of our American settlements, less from the act of governments, than from the enterprize of in dividuals. This circumstance, joined to a distance, which, small as it was, formed, in the infanc.y of naviga tion, a serious obstacle to the maintenance of intimacy of connection, rendered the colonies almost always inde pendent of the mother country. When Cyrus overran the Lydian territory, the parent states in Greece declined to take arms in defence of their kindred tribes along the coast of Asia Minor. The latter were accordingly in corporated with the Persian monarchv, and remained subject to it, until the overthrow of Xerxes, and the naval triumphs of Cimon, enabled the Greeks to demand the acknowledgment of their independence, as a condi tion of suspending hostilities. During the preceding xra
of Grecian glory, the colonies resumed, or rather form ed for the first time, an alliance with Athens, the chief maritime pottier of the mother country, and contributed an annual sum as a fund for the general defence against Persia. This alliance continued till the latter part of the Peloponnesian war. The most important point in it for our present consideration, is the fact that the alliance in question comprehended, not merely the settlements of Athens, but those of her rival states, and was posterior, by several centuries, to the original emigration. It arose, therefore, less from the recollections of early connection, than from the dictates of present policy.
The Roman colonies were, in several respects, dif ferent from those of Greece. After the abrogation, in the third century of Rome, of the laws which stipulated the division of the conquered lands among the military citizens, the middling classes among the Romans were frequently losers even by successful war. Their limited portions of property were often neglected during their absence in the field, while their richer neighbours were enabled to carry on an uninterrupted cultivation by the labour of slaves. hence the embarrassed circumstances and immense debts of the plebeians, by whom we are to understand, not the vulgar, but the middling classes in Rome. Hence those reiterated discontents, and the fre quent clamour for the enactment of an Agrarian law. After many struggles, a law was at last passed to pro hibit the possession of more than five hundred jugera, (three hundred and fifty English acres) by any indivi dual ; but the execution of this law was found imprac ticable, and from the influence of the rich over the poor, an attempt on the part of a spirited citizen to enforce it, seldom failed to lead to his downfall.' The usual salvo, on occasions of serious discontent, was an offer by the patricians to lead forth a new colony, that was to divide a remote portion of lately conquered land among a speci fied number of needy citizens. These settled on the allot ted spot for the purpose (agreeably to the name colonic) of cultivating it ; but the military policy of Rome made these detached portions of the community subservient likewise to other objects. The transplanted citizens were soldiers, and formed a strong out-post for the defence of the territories between them and the parent city. This system of colonization, exercised at first on a small scale, and directed chiefly against those trouble some neighbours of Rome, the Jr qui and Volsci, was progressively extended, and continued even after the fall of Roman liberty. Among other colonies, it is on re cord that Julius Coesar led one to Carthage. No fewer than 164 colonies were successively established within the limits of Italy, in the period between the limndation of the city and the death of the Emperor Augustus.