172 ADAM SMITH. 



to be the most valuable; and the commerce in commo- 

 dities at first despised, gives rise now to the bulk of the 

 European intercourse with the new world. 



2. The abundance of good land, and the knowledge 

 of agriculture and the arts which settlers take out with 

 them to a new or a conquered colony, are the causes of its 

 rapid increase in population and in wealth. The Ameri- 

 can plantations greatly surpass the Greek in this respect, 

 and very greatly surpass the Roman, while their distance 

 from the mother country gives them far greater freedom 

 than the latter had in managing their own concerns. 

 Even under the tyrannical government and bad manage- 

 ment of Spain, Mexico had 100,000 inhabitants a cen- 

 tury ago, five times as many as at the conquest. Brazil 

 had above half a million of Portuguese, or their descend- 

 ants ; while in British North America, the number of the 

 people doubles in seventeen or eighteen years, and now 

 amounts to nearly 20,000,000. The more rapid progress 

 of our colonies is owing to four leading circumstances : the 

 law preventing land from being engrossed in a few 

 hands, and preventing it being conveyed unless a certain 

 portion is cultivated; the general law of equal division 

 by succession, without regard to primogeniture; the 

 low amount of the taxes; the more favourable trading 

 system, which gives no exclusive companies the monopoly 

 of their commerce, and allows certain produce to be freely 

 imported into the mother country, throwing open for 

 all produce all her ports, and giving them all the inesti- 

 mable advantages of a free and popular government. 



3. The advantages derived from the colonies have 

 been either those obtained by Europe at large, or those 

 obtained by the several colonizing Powers. 



