The Colonies

Their right to local supremacy and internal legislation, was asserted by every colony, ably defended by many individuals, and conclusively proved by our early congresses composed of a rare body of men.

The colonies replied, that it would be more absurd to limit powers, and yet concede unlimited means for their execution, by which the internal supremacy, upon which their liberty and happiness depended, though nominally allowed, would be effectually destroyed:

During, and soon after a war, firmly waged for eight years, to resist a right to legislate for them locally and internally, inferred from parliamentary sovereignty or supremacy, the colonies or states constructed two unions, and established in both a division of power, bearing a strong similitude to that upon which they were willing to have continued their union with England;

Colonus, or the independent person who entered into a contract of locatio-conductio respecting land, must be distinguished from the colonus who mainly composed the agricultural population under the empire.

In the course of that long period during which our records of the Roman Empire are most incomplete, the slave-gangs of the great Roman families became transformed into the coloni, whose origin and situation constitute one of the obscurest questions in all history.