2 GENERAL REMARKS. [CHAP. I. 



kind has its natural boundaries, within which it 

 can live, and thrive, and attain its fullest vigour 

 and beauty If we intend to propagate them in 

 climates differing from their own, we may do so by 

 creating an artificial state of things, resembling 

 that of the place to which they are indigenous. 

 But this is little practicable in the transplantation 

 of man Many colonies have, indeed, been founded 

 in unfavourable positions for the purpose of obtain- 

 ing the peculiar produce of the country, as the 

 sugar, coffee, cacao, and indigo of the West Indies, 

 the gum of Senegal, the palm-oil of the Cape Coast. 

 But in such cases the colony was not what would 

 seem to be the true meaning of the word, an offset 

 from the parent state, planted and reared to ma- 

 turity in a foreign soil ; but merely a factory, where 

 the ease of acquiring riches by supplying a certain 

 commodity to the home market has rendered men 

 reckless of the dangers of climate, and regardless 

 of the loss of life attending the speculation. In 

 such colonies the European population soon became 

 decrepit, and degenerated from the strength and 

 vigour of the stock from which they descended. 

 In some instances they were supported by a regular 

 system of oppression and extortion towards the 

 original inhabitants, who had reason to curse the 

 hour in which civilised Europeans first came 

 amongst them ; but, more frequently, they could 

 only exist by what might be called the colonial 

 hothouse system, in other words, by the slavery and 



