The colonial history of Britain presents a prospect so wide and so diversified; it is so rich in great enterprises and strange events; so abundant in economical lessons, and carries our attention from point to point over so vast a portion of the surface of the earth, that selection and compression appear almost equally difficult. A mere catalogue of the provinces inhabited by British colonists, with a geographical description of each, would completely exhaust the time of my hearers without much advantage; and therefore, in order to impress a few prominent features of the subject on your attention, I must solicit your indulgence for much unavoidable omission. My object will chiefly be to indicate those facts which will be of value as examples, which may serve as tests of doctrines hereafter to be considered, as indications of a policy to be recommended or to be avoided. Wherever, therefore, we pause for a few moments in our rapid course, we shall probably on a future occasion find it necessary to return.

The general policy of England towards her colonies, down to the period of American independence, is no where so ably developed as in the masterly sketch contained in the seventh chapter of the fourth book of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. True, he wrote against a theory, and his facts are collected and arranged with a view to his argument; and since that theory was supported by the popular opinion of his times, Adam Smith, although in point of fact he did not carry out his refutation so far as he might have done, was regarded as an ingenious but dangerous speculator.