governed by functionaries from the mother country, and thus people living long in the colonies become accustomed to a despotic functionary government, while the patronage of so many offices and appointments gives an increased force to the central power, and the enlarged supply of places produces a numerous class of placehunters. The evils of a centralised despotic functionarism beset these colonies almost necessarily, and it is jealously to be guarded against that they should not be the means of introducing that form of government into the mother country; a form of government which, as I have elsewhere noted, is one of the great evils impending over and threatening, in a manner the more dangerous because the more alluring, countries which are in the stage of mingled plutocracy and democracy.

The colonies of the last class-government plantations-are founded for a purpose of the mother country, and with a view to relieve it from a superfluous and discontented population. These necessarily, therefore, exercise in that respect a beneficial influence on the mother country; but being, like the last-mentioned, governed by a central despotic functionarism, there is the same danger arising from them to the mother country.

If colonies shall in future be classified according to the stage of national progress in which the mother countries were when they respectively sent them forth, there will be some chance of the reasons of the prosperity or the failure of colonies being at length understood. At At present there is no subject upon which so much confusion exists, and resemblances accidental and trivial are made the basis of classifications which, instead of clearing, only further cloud the matter. It must be allowed, however, that the confusion is not altogether the fault of political writers, but is much owing to princes and statesmen who have attempted to found inappropriate colonies.

Of these, and the relation which they bear to colonies which are the natural consequences of the condition of the

mother country, it may be proper to add a few words. The earliest colonies go forth at the time when aristocracy and theocracy are the prevailing social elements. The young military nobles, settling in these new countries, maintain their pride of birth as long as they can without women of their own race, which is but for a generation or two, and they either impose their creed upon the conquered people or form a new mixed religion from the fusion of their own with that of the people of the country. Now, the Greek emigrants of this class adopted the latter course, for paganism had at least this advantage : that it was pliable; and the gods of the Greek nobles formed a united community with the gods of the native tribes of Asia Minor, in the same way as their respective worshippers fused into one harmonious population; and so in the course of time, when new immigrants, such as the ejected minorities from the mother states, flocked in, if their religion was at all different, either the differences were quietly dropped or they were allowed as quietly to change the belief of the colony. Theocracy was never socially troublesome among the Greeks, whatever it may have been among the Egyptians and Etrurians; and this is one reason why the Greeks so easily and speedily obtained their acme.

Now, the military aristocracy which founded the crusaders' colonies, and the military quasi-aristocracy which founded the colonies of Spain and Portugal, were altogether different in this respect. In the countries from which they emigrated theocracy was as powerful, if not more so, than aristocracy itself. The crusaders went at the bidding and as the servants of the theocracy, and the Spanish and Portuguese knights never forgot that they were soldiers of the faith, and compensated, in their own estimation, for all their crimes and cruelties by converting the Indians to their own creed.* The theocratic intolerance was moderated

* In this respect the Spaniard presents a curious contrast to the Puritan in America. The latter, though he emigrated for a religious reason, did little to convert the Indians.

in some degree in the colonies of Portugal; as they became commercial, they admitted something of that religious freedom which is essential to a true national development. The Portuguese had, however, but a small share of it, and a stunted development, while the Spaniard never got free of his theocracy either at home or in his colonies. To those colonies never resorted men who fled from the countries of Europe to escape the tyranny of the Church *, nor were they enabled by the inroad of factions exiled from the mother country, eventually to rival it in the energy, spirit, and splendour of their independent exertions.

There was another check to their independence. The early Greeks (and in this respect the crusaders resembled them) went forth from nations where aristocracy was the ruling secular element; monarchy was but an institution established by the aristocrats for the purpose of preserving national unity. A central government in the form in which it exists in later stages had no existence, and the young military noblesse who emigrated, if they found a central government necessary for the colony which they established, would erect one in the colony itself. Consequently, the early Greek colonies are wholly free from the mother country. They owe it affection and respect, but no allegiance; and that was likewise the relation of the crusaders' colonies to their mother countries, except when the Italian commercial system prevailed.

But a wholly different state of things existed in Spain and Portugal. In neither of them was there a true aristocracy. In each the monarchy had established itself as the real secular element of the time. The quasi-aristocrats were but the courtiers that clustered round a military throne; accustomed to fight in Europe for the joint glory of their king and their church, it was their pride to fight in the other hemisphere for the glory of the same masters. The central government never relaxed its

*Child, p. 203, 217.

hold upon the Spanish and Portuguese colonies till foreign interference and the deep decadence of the mother country changed the state of affairs. Till then they remained dependencies upon the executive. They are, therefore, classed by most writers with the garrison or commercial colonies, sent out by the strong central governments of a later stage of national development. But this is erroneous, for they were founded originally by the military quasinoblesse, and not by the government. But this noblesse being in fact but a mere set of courtiers, and not receiving an influx of free and sturdy citizens like the Huguenots, or the Puritans, or the Greek ejected parties, never shook off the yoke of the home government, and formed, with a rapidity owing to the mines, plutocratic societies; and to such societies a strong central government and a gorgeous religion are not alien. Therefore the colonies of these two nations, never going through that stage of existence to which liberty, both civil and religious, is essential, passed at once from that early stage when monarchy and theocracy are the ruling elements, to the later stage when plutocracy, and a strong central government, and a gay religion are appropriate. And the theocracy of Spanish America came to be not an independent theocracy such as we have seen to flourish in the early history of nations, and to be a useful check to the monarchy, but came to be, like the theocracy of the despotism which marks the last stage of national existence, a mere branch of the despotic functionarism. From the place of the Archbishop to that of doorkeeper of the cathedral, all ecclesiastical office in America flowed directly from the king; and the priests were the strongest and most reliable of the despotic functionaries.

Now a central government regards a colonial dependency as useful principally for three purposes; to keep guard over conquered territories, to form safe marts at which the merchants of the mother country may trade with the native population, and send home their produce,

and to furnish a receptacle for discontents and malefactors.

The strong central government of Venice made its colonies useful for all three purposes; they were formed of discharged soldiers, and a town rabble accustomed to the central government at home, and well suited there

fore for these purposes. The Portuguese and Spanish

monarchies, as soon as their territory was acquired for them in the Indies by the military courtiers who went there, following the Italian example required the colonies to trade with no country in Europe but the mother country, and to hold their new territories, and what further territory they might acquire, for and on behalf of the home government. And thus the monarchy of Spain regarded Spanish America as an integral portion of their dominions, and exercising over them the same absolute dominion as it exercised over the mother country, forbad them to trade except with the mother country. The executive in Spanish America consisted of Spaniards sent out from Spain as governmental functionaries, and they of course were willing enough to enforce this decree. In this manner the Spanish colonies, though not formed of the same social elements as the Italian or the Carthaginian, came to have several of the same characteristics; and the Portuguese, whose first founders were of the Spanish type, while their immediate successors were more of the Italian, still more naturally assumed the characteristics of the latter.

The first English colonies were founded by adventurers and statesmen, who, perceiving the utility of colonies to the countries I have just named, thought it would be expedient for England to have similar appendages, and more particularly, those who favoured the growth of the monarchical power thought it desirable to found colonies which, like those of Spain and Portugal, might pay large tribute to the central government, without the intervention of Parliament. The colonies, though founded by the