in every age and country, mankind have been driven abroad from the luxuries and endearments of home, to seek better fortunes in distant lands—they are the institutions, at the same time, which have rendered it most difficult to prevent those colonial settlements from breaking off in anger from the parent state. Such was the smothered discontent which prevailed in all the colonies of the republics of antiquity, that, on the first serious reverse to the parent state, they all proclaimed their independence, and the vast colonial dominion was at once dissolved. The revolt of all the Athenian colonies, after the disaster of Argospotamos; of the Spartan confederacy, after the defeat of Leuctra; of the Roman colonies, after the slaughter of Cannæ; of the Carthaginians, upon the overthrow of Zama, have all their parallels in modern times; when, on the first serious reverse to more recent republics, their whole colonial dependencies at once proclaimed their independence, and, so far from supporting the mother country, fearfully swelled the ranks of its enemies. Upon any considerable reverse to Venice, Florence, or Genoa, the cities of which they formed the head broke off from a subjection which they hated, to destroy that invidious authority in which they were not permitted to bear any part. The American war, and loss of her magnificent transatlantic possessions to Great Britain, is another instance of the inherent tendency of democratic societies to lose their full-grown offspring, at the very time when they have arrived at the period of life when they might zealously expect from them efficient assistance, and some return for the long anxieties and protracted solicitude of maternal care.
No person who surveys with a dispassionate eye the relative situation of Great Britain, and her astonishing colonial empire, can entertain a doubt that we are on the verge of a similar catastrophe, and that nothing but the long duration of European peace, and the halo of renown which England has inherited from the deeds of other days, prevents a general separation of her colonies from taking place. Canada, though in profound peace, has twice broken out into open revolt; albeit provoking, by so doing, the undivided strength of a nation which, five-and-twenty years ago, hurled Napoleon from his throne. Jamaica is in such a state of exasperation, that Government have deemed it necessary to bring forward two different bills for the suspension of its constitution, and the entire subjection of its inhabitants to the rule of a despotic Governor and Council. New South Wales is brooding over injuries which absorb almost the whole ample columns of their local press; and a spirit of discontent is there awakened, which only requires a little more strength to make that distant colony break off the connexion with the mother country, even at the hazard of losing that extraordinary prosperity which, in twenty-five years, has augmented its shipping and commerce above thirty-fold. Such is the dissatisfaction prevalent at the Cape, that not only has the emigration to that noble settlement nearly stopped, but the settlers are actually crossing over with their herds and families to the Caffre territories, and voluntarily incurring the risks of savage rule, rather than the protracted insolence and injustice of civilized democratic government. Even the Ionian islands have fallen into a state of discontent; and Sir Howard Douglas has just followed the common example of dissolving the House of Assembly in Corfu, on account of the rebellious spirit of our Greek subjects. If any man imagines that a colonial empire, agitated by such passions, suffering under such evils, is in a tranquil state, or possessed of the cohesion and moral attachment requisite to make it hold together under the shocks of adverse fortune, he is little versed either in the history of mankind, or its secret spring, the workings of the human heart.
It is remarkable that this tendency to break off from the mother country, and separate into a multitude of independent states on the first serious national reverse, is peculiar to the colonial dependencies of democratic governments, and does not exist in any degree in firm or strongly cemented monarchies. Such monarchies have none of the inherent vigour and energy which is requisite to produce proper colonial offshoots; but in the dominions which they have acquired by conquest, or succeeded to by inheritance, there is none of that restless desire of emancipation, which forms so strong a feature in the character of
