Excerpt from The Foundation of the American Colonies: A Lecture Delivered Before the University of Oxford, June 12, 1860

Colony is an ambiguous word: the Phoenician colonies were factories; the Roman colonies were garrisons; the Spanish colonies were gold mines, worked by slaves; France justly placed the products of her Algerian colony in our Exhibition under the heading "Ministry of War." The Greek cities, in the hour of their greatness, founded new cities the counterparts of themselves. England has had the honour, an honour which no disaster can now rend from her, of becoming the parent of new nations. To colonize in this the highest sense is the attribute of freedom. Freedom only can give the necessary self-reliance. In freedom only can the habit of self-government requisite for a young community be formed. The life of the plant must he diffused through all its parts, or its cuttings will not grow.

It is evidently a law of Providence that man shall spread over the earth, make it fruitful, fill it with moral being. When all its powers are brought into play, when it has a civilized nation on every shore, when the instrument is, as it were, fully strung, we know not what harmony may result. The great migrations of mankind are the great epochs of history. In the East, the succession of empires has been formed by the successive descents of warlike tribes on the plains of Mesopotamia, on the countries bordering the Persian gulf, on Hindostan and China.

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