42 BERMUDA. 



genuine spirit of the mother countrji They are 

 practical republics, and present as faithful a picture 

 of the petty states of old Greece as the change of 

 manners and religion will allow. There is the same 

 equality amongst them, the same undue conception 

 of their own importance, the same irritability of 

 temper, which has ever been the characteristic curse 

 of all little commonwealths. 



The forms, indeed, of the English Parliament are 

 too gigantic for the capacities of little islands ; the 

 colonists are not elevated by the size, but lost in the 

 folds of the mighty robe, which was never destined 

 for their use. 



The colonies of a free State are more embarrassing 

 problems of government than those of a country 

 where the monarch is absolute. The Spanish posses- 

 sions in America were twenty, times as large as Old 

 Spain; yet for three centuries they were regulated 

 by a European council, which, with the exception of 

 its errors in commerce, and prejudices concerning 

 race and rank, governed them well, and ultimately 

 effected the introduction of those humanizing decrees 

 which have justly raised the name of the Spanish 

 colonists over those of any other nation. 



A different relation, however, arises between a 

 free nation and its distant settlements ; the colonists 



