chap, ii.] WEST INDIES. 189 
grants, proclamations, charters, and treaties, the 
same liberties, privileges and immunities, which 
are possessed and enjoyed by their fellow subjects 
remaining in Great Britain. 
I do not indeed know that those grants, procla¬ 
mations, charters, and treaties, were essentially 
necessary to freedom; for if, as I presume I have 
sufficiently demonstrated on a former occasion/ 
even a conquered state, retaining its ancient inha¬ 
bitants, no sooner becomes ceded to Great Britain, 
than it is assimilated to its government, and imbibes 
the spirit of its free constitution;—if this, as I con¬ 
tend, is the law of England, it requires but little 
argument to prove that English subjects, whether 
settling in countries which their valour has annex¬ 
ed to the British dominion, or emigrating for the 
purpose of forming plantations on vacant or dere¬ 
lict lands, are entitled of right, so long as they 
preserve their allegiance, to at least an equal de¬ 
gree of national protection, with adopted aliens and 
vanquished enemies. Some of our possessions in 
America and the West Indies (Jamaica in particu¬ 
lar, as we have seen) were obtained by the forces 
of the state; the individuals of which became pro¬ 
prietors of the country which they had conquered. 
Other countries, as Barbadoes and Antigua, were 
found vacant and unoccupied, and were made valu- 
ble appendages to Great Britain, by the enterpri¬ 
sing spirit and at the sole expense of a few private 
* Book III. c. z. 
