An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (ebook reader with highlighter txt) 📖

government, enacted its own laws,

elected its own magistrates, and made peace or war with its

neighbours, as an independent state, which had no occasion to

wait for the approbation or consent of the mother city. Nothing

can be more plain and distinct than the interest which directed

every such establishment.

 

Rome, like most of the other ancient republics, 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 course of human affairs, by marriage, by

succession, and by alienation, necessarily deranged this original

division, and frequently threw the lands which had been allotted

for the maintenance of many different families, into the

possession of a single person. To remedy this disorder, for

such it was supposed to be, a law was made, restricting the

quantity of land which any citizen could possess to five hundred

jugera; about 350 English acres. This law, however, though we

read of its having been executed upon one or two occasions, 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 customs of those times

rendered it difficult for a freeman to maintain his independency.

In the present 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 some little retail trade ; and if he

has no stock, 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 slaves, who wrought

under an overseer, who was likewise a slave; so 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 slaves of the rich for the benefit

of their masters, whose 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 subsistence 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 divisions of lands, and represented

that law which restricted this sort of private property as the

fundamental law of the republic. The people became clamorous to

get land, and the rich and the great, we may believe, were

perfectly determined not to give them any part of theirs. To

satisfy them in some measure, therefore, they frequently proposed

to send out a new colony. But conquering Rome was, even upon such

occasions, under no necessity of turning out her citizens to seek

their fortune, if one may so, through the wide world, without

knowing where they were to settle. She assigned them lands

generally in the conquered provinces of Italy, where, being

within the dominions of the republic, they could never form any

independent state, but were at best but a sort of corporation,

which, though it had the power of enacting bye-laws for its own

government, was at all times subject to the correction,

jurisdiction, and legislative authority of the mother city. The

sending out a colony of this kind not only gave some satisfaction

to the people, but often established a sort of garrison, too, in

a newly conquered province, of which the obedience might

otherwise have been doubtful. A Roman colony, therefore, whether

we consider the nature of the establishment itself, or the

motives for making it, was altogether different from a Greek one.

The words, accordingly, which in the original languages denote

those different establishments, have very different meanings. The

Latin word (colonia) signifies simply a plantation. The Greek

word (apoixia), on the contrary, signifies a separation of

dwelling, a departure from home, a going out of the house. But

though the Roman colonies were, in many respects, different from

the Greek ones, the interest which prompted to establish them was

equally plain and distinct. Both institutions derived their

origin, either from irresistible necessity, or from clear and

evident utility.

 

The establishment of the European colonies in America and the

West Indies arose from no necessity; and though the utility which

has resulted from them has been very great, it is not altogether

so clear and evident. It was not understood at their first

establishment, and was not the motive, either of that

establishment, or of the discoveries which gave occasion to it ;

and the nature, extent, and limits of that utility, are not,

perhaps, well understood at this day.

 

The Venetians, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,

carried on a very advantageous commerce in spiceries and other

East India goods, which they distributed among the other nations

of Europe. They purchased them chiefly in Egypt, at that time

under the dominion of the Mamelukes, the enemies of the Turks, of

whom the Venetians were the enemies ; and this union of interest,

assisted by the money of Venice, formed such a connexion as gave

the Venetians almost a monopoly of the trade.

 

The great profits of the Venetians tempted the avidity of the

Portuguese. They had been endeavouring, during the course of the

fifteenth century, to find out by sea a way to the countries from

which the Moors brought them ivory and gold dust across the

desert. They discovered the Madeiras, the Canaries, the Azores,

the Cape de Verd islands, the coast of Guinea, that of Loango,

Congo, Angola, and Benguela, and, finally, the Cape of Good Hope.

They had long wished to share in the profitable traffic of the

Venetians, and this last discovery opened to them a probable

prospect of doing so. In 1497, Vasco de Gamo sailed from the port

of Lisbon with a fleet of four ships, and, after a navigation of

eleven months, arrived upon the coast of Indostan ; and thus

completed a course of discoveries which had been pursued with

great steadiness, and with very little interruption, for near a

century together.

 

Some years before this, while the expectations of Europe were in

suspense about the projects of the Portuguese, of which the

success appeared yet to be doubtful, a Genoese pilot formed the

yet more daring project of sailing to the East Indies by the

west. The situation of those countries was at that time very

imperfectly known in Europe. The few European travellers who had

been there, had magnified the distance, perhaps through

simplicity and ignorance ; what was really very great, appearing

almost infinite to those who could not measure it; or, perhaps,

in order to increase somewhat more the marvellous of their own

adventures in visiting regions so immensely remote from Europe.

The longer the way was by the east, Columbus very justly

concluded, the shorter it would be by the west. He proposed,

therefore, to take that way, as both the shortest and the surest,

and he had the good fortune to convince Isabella of Castile of

the probability of his project. He sailed from the port of Palos

in August 1492, near five years before the expedition of Vasco de

Gamo set out from Portugal; and, after a voyage of between two

and three months, discovered first some of the small Bahama or

Lucyan islands, and afterwards the great island of St. Domingo.

 

But the countries which Columbus discovered, either in this or in

any of his subsequent voyages, had no resemblance to those which

he had gone in quest of. Instead of the wealth, cultivation, and

populousness of China and Indostan, he found, in St. Domingo, and

in all the other parts of the new world which he ever visited,

nothing but a country quite covered with wood, uncultivated, and

inhabited only by some tribes of naked and miserable savages. He

was not very willing, however, to believe that they were not the

same with some of the countries described by Marco Polo, the

first European who had visited, or at least had left behind him

any description of China or the East Indies ; and a very slight

resemblance, such as that which he found between the name of

Cibao, a mountaim in St. Domingo, and that of Cipange, mentioned

by Marco Polo, was frequently sufficient to make him return to

this favourite prepossession, though contrary to the clearest

evidence. In his letters to Ferdinand and Isabella, he called the

countries which he had discovered the Indies. He entertained no

doubt but that they were the extremity of those which had been

described by Marco Polo, and that they were not very distant from

the Ganges, or from the countries which had been conquered by

Alexander. Even when at last convinced that they were different,

be still flattered himself that those rich countries were at no

great distance; and in a subsequent voyage, accordingly, went in

quest of them along the coast of Terra Firma, and towards the

Isthmus of Darien.

 

In consequence of this mistake of Columbus, the name of the

Indies has stuck to those unfortunate countries ever since; and

when it was at last clearly discovered that the new were

altogether different from the old Indies, the former were called

the West, in contradistinction to the latter, which were called

the East Indies.

 

It was of importance to Columbus, however, that the countries

which he had discovered, whatever they were, should be

represented to the court of Spain as of very great consequence ;

and, in what constitutes the real riches of every country, the

animal and vegetable productions of the soil, there was at that

time nothing which could well justify such a representation of

them.

 

The cori, something between a rat and a rabbit, and supposed by

Mr Buffon to be the same with the aperea of Brazil, was the

largest viviparous quadruped in St. Domingo. This species seems

never to have been very nurnerous; and the dogs and cats of the

Spaniards are said to have long ago almost entirely extirpated

it, as well as some other tribes of a still smaller size. These,

however, together with a pretty large lizard, called the ivana or

iguana, constituted the principal part of the animal food which

the land afforded.

 

The vegetable food of the inhabitants, though, from their want of

industry, not very abundant, was not altogether so scanty. It

consisted in Indian corn, yams, potatoes, bananas, etc., plants

which were then altogether unknown in Europe, and which have

never since been very much esteemed in it, or supposed to yield a

sustenance equal to what is drawn from the common sorts of grain

and pulse, which have been cultivated in this part of the world

time out of mind.

 

The cotton plant, indeed, afforded the material of a very

important manufacture, and was at that time, to Europeans,

undoubtedly the most valuable of all the vegetable productions of

those islands. But though, in the end of the fifteenth century,

the muslins and other cotton goods of the East Indies were much

esteemed in every part of Europe, the cotton manufacture itself

was not cultivated in any part of it. Even this production,

therefore, could not at that time appear in the eyes of Europeans

to be of very great consequence.

 

Finding nothing, either in the animals or vegetables of the newly

discovered countries which could justify a very advantageous

representation of them, Columbus turned his view towards their

minerals; and in the richness of their productions of this third

kingdom, he flattered himself he had found a full compensation

for the insignificancy of those of the other two. The little bits

of gold with which the inhabitants ornamented their dress, and

which, he