Colonus

“ The Roman colonus was originally a free person who took land on lease, contracting to pay to the proprietor either a fixed sum annually or (when a colonus par- liarius) a cer.tain proportion of the produce of the farm. Under the emperors of the 4th century the name designated a cultivator who, though personally free, was attached to the soil, and transmitted his condition to his descendants; and this became the regular status of the mass of Roman cultivators. ”

“ Who were the best Friends to the Colony, Those who with great Labour and Cost had endeavoured to form a Colony of His Majesty's Subjects, and persecuted Protestants from other Parts of Europe, had placed them on a fruitful Soil, and strove to secure them in their Possessions, by those Arts which naturally tend to keep the Colony full of useful and industrious People, capable both to cultivate and defend it ”

“ Already the colonists say, ‘We shall have another war ten years hence.’ The military hoping to leave the Colony, rejoice in the prospect of home; those lately come out wear rueful countenances,—visions of solitary outposts, of commandos, of no society, of continued discomfort, disgust the young soldiers just arrived, and promise no good will in the performance of their duties. ”

“ We send out colonies of the limbs, without the belly and the head, of needy persons, many of them mere paupers, or even criminals; colonies made up of a single class of persons in the community, and that the most helpless and the most unfit to perpetuate our national character, and to become the fathers of a race whose habits of thinking and feeling shall correspond to those which, in the meantime, we are cherishing at home. The ancients, on the contrary, sent out a representation of the parent State—colonists from all ranks. ”

“ This colony is successful in furnishing, as do the score of other colonies in Germany, a haven to the “brothers of the highway” who are stranded and unable to live honestly without our help. This colony is a colony not for the permanent rehabilitation of its inmates, but for the temporary succor of those who seek our help. ”

“ The inhabitants retained the rest of their lands, and lived together with the new settlers, who alone composed the proper colony. The conquered people must at first have been quite a distinct class from, and inferior to, the colonists. No colonia was established without a lex, plebiscitum, or senatusconsultum; a fact which shows that a Roman colony was never a mere body of adventurers, but had a regular organisation by the parent state. ”

“ To give the greater weight to what I say, I may take the liberty to tell you, I have as little personal interest, as little to lose in the colony, as most of you. If I consulted either my safety or my temporal interest, I should soon remove with my family to Great Britain, or the Northern colonies, where I have had very inviting offers. Nature has not formed me for a military life, nor furnished me with any great degree of fortitude and courage ”

“ The custom is an old one and long given up, and I do not like to return upon a road that I have traveled, or dig up old bones.
“In the villages on the heights—in the lower valleys of the mountain range that lies there—” he waved a brown arm toward the far blue hills, “the people who dwell there are worshippers of our gods, and their ways are as the ways of this colony, O my fathers. Their women spin, they weave, they grind grain, they tend bees, they keep the household fire alive and bright, they are fair and pure. These are fit wives for our soldiers—or for any man. ”

“ On the other hand, the English troops felt quite as bitterly as the colonists, and Colonel King wrote to St John in July 1711, "You'll find in my Journal what Difficultyes we mett with through the Misfortune that the Coloneys were not inform'd of our Coming two Months sooner, and through the Interestedness, ill Nature, and Sowerness of these People, whose Government, Doctrine and Manners, whose Hypocracy and canting, are insupportable; and no man living but one of Gen'l Hill's good sense and good nature could have managed them. ”

“ What I mean to say is that while we all admire your courage and shrewdness and while we are willing to admit that you’ve done the colony a great service I must say that you are now undertaking something that is beyond your powers. ”

“ They are entitled to the greatest credit and the warmest praise; and great as has been the misrule of this colony for many years, it would have been much greater and much more disgraceful, if it had not been for their efforts. ”

“ This man, who had a long gray beard framing a ruddy face tinged bluish in places, was an old retired colonel, whom every one in town knew. He belonged to that colony of the Superannuated who had settled down in this pleasant place to wearily drag out the end of their days. ”

“ England has lost her colonies—"
"Her late colonies," corrected Katharine, softly.
"Yes, yes, of course, her late colonies, that is, beyond possibility of recovery. We will not be taxed without representation."
"But suppose that we gave you the representation for which you asked, colonel. How then? Would not there be a general return to allegiance in that event?" queried the captain.
"Sir," replied the colonel, proudly, "the child who has once learned to walk alone does not afterward go back to creeping and crawling, or stumbling along by the aid of his mother's hand. ”

“ The fictitious statements of the "dreadful accident-makers," who more than once caused accounts of the starvation of the settlers to appear in the public prints, and the report of those settlers who were chagrined and disappointed at not meeting with all their too sanguine expectations induced them to anticipate, have led the public to look upon the Settlement rather with an eye of pity, than with a generous satisfaction at its promising success. But, notwithstanding all this, the Colony not only exists, but it increases. ”

“ These peoples,—the first of the Colony to declare for freedom,—were on the eve of passing under a yoke far more oppressive than that from which not three years before they had sought to escape, and their homes were to become so desolate that expatriation would be found preferable to a perplexing residence and distressful life in the region where they had garnered up present possessions and future hopes. ”

“ In the Colonies, as everywhere else in this world, the vital point is not who decides, but what is decided on! That measures tending really to the best advantage temporal and spiritual of the Colony be adopted, and strenuously put in execution; there lies the grand interest of every good citizen British and Colonial. Such measures, whosoever have originated and prescribed them, will gradually be sanctioned by all men and gods; and clamors of every kind in reference to them may safely to a great extent be neglected, as clamorous merely, and sure to be transient. ”

“ Sir, The present alarming state of the colony, in which every man's property, liberty, and life are endangered, induces us most earnestly to implore you instantly to place Governor Bligh under arrest, and to assume the command of the colony. We pledge ourselves, at a moment of less agitation, to come forward to support the measure with our fortunes and our lives. ”

“ When you come out endeavour to obtain as many letters as you can from persons of note, as introductions to the Governor, or any of those who may hold high situations in the Colony, for passports of this sort may be of infinite service to you, and will convince those who are in the Colony, that you are neither a scape-grace sent out by friends to make a last shift, nor a runaway from creditors. ”

“ It is no longer a question of speculation whether a colony can or cannot be planted from the United States of free persons of color on the shores of Africa. It is a matter demonstrated; such a colony, in fact, exists, prospers, has made successful war, and honorable peace, and transacts all the multiplied business of a civilized and christian community.14 It now has about five hundred souls, disciplined troops, forts, and other means of defence, sovereignty over an extensive territory, and exerts a powerful and salutary influence over the neighboring clans. ”

“ In this colony, sir, every laboring man of ordinary capacity may, in a few years, become proprietor of land sufficient to supply all his wants, by laboring upon it for thirty hours in the week. I am persuaded that it is only necessary to make the capabilities of our magnificent colony known, to insure us a large influx of emigrants. ”

“ I have spoken to some practical farmers, who have not the slightest doubt that the colony posseses every capability, both for agriculture and grazing, and though the pasture lands on this side of the hills are not extensive, there is an unlimited tract behind them, and at no great distance. ”

“ It has become the pride and the boast of colonists, as of horse-dealers, that they are sharp fellows; that they have cut their eye-teeth, and are remarkably wide-awake. These honourable distinctions are acknowledged by the simple-minded with alarm. They feel like men involved among a mob, and instinctively button up their pockets.
The moral thermometer in a colony is lamentably low. ”

“ I have ever considered myself fortunate in not having been born in the earlier and infant days of the colony, when the interests at stake, and the events by which they were influenced, were not of a magnitude to give the mind and the hopes the excitement and enlargement that attend the periods of a more advanced civilization, and of more important incidents. ”

“ The officers in turn rented out the land to the soldiers under them, and none save the Colonel himself was allowed to return to France, so anxious was that country to increase the population of its colonies. ”

“ Somehow I had pictured to myself a penal colony as a place where the unfortunate, removed from their former troubles and temptations, were turned loose in a new and virgin land and, with an occasional helping hand from above, given the opportunity to begin life anew. ”

“ If we suppose the population of one of the agricultural parishes in England, with a sprinkling of half pay officers of the navy and army, some gentlemen from the East and West Indies, and a few cockneys, put down on the shores of a wilderness, it will give some idea of the individuals who were destined to become the founders of this interesting new Colony.
The settlers may be divided into two classes, viz. gentlemen and labourers, many of them married and having young families, others single. ”

“ But the Farm Colony, any more than the City Colony, although an abiding institution, will not provide permanently for those with whom we have to deal. It is a Training School for Emigrants, a place where those indispensably practical lessons are given which will enable the Colonists to know their way about and to feel themselves at home wherever there is land to till, stock to rear, and harvests to reap. We shall rely greatly for the peace and prosperity of the Colony upon the sense of brotherhood which will be universal in it from the highest to the lowest. ”

“ At 10.30 we landed and went up the hill to breakfast with Sir Arthur and Miss Kennedy, and heard a good deal about the colony. It is wonderful to think that thirty years ago it scarcely existed, and now it is a large and flourishing place, with splendid houses, institutions, roads, and gardens. We were also most agreeably surprised by the beauty of the scenery. It is really lovely, and, though the hills around are barren, wherever cultivation has been attempted, vegetation appears to flourish luxuriantly. The climate cannot be very bad, judging by the healthy look of the residents and troops. ”

“ Beneath the thatched roof of the first rude house for divine worship ever erected in the Colony stood the little company of one hundred colored emigrants, who had ventured all things to gain for themselves and children a home and inheritance of liberty and before God pledged themselves to maintain the Constitution of their choice, and prove faithful to the great trust committed to their hands. ”

“ Some eminent man arrives in the colony, spends a few weeks in it, perhaps rushes through it by railway, and hastens home to publish some contemptuous account of the people whom he does not really know, or some hasty if not fallacious description of the country which he has not really seen. ”

“ THE COLONY UNDER ALBERT.
The Colonists, thus abandoned by their countrymen, proceeded to make themselves secure in their forest habitations. Day and night did they address themselves to the completion of their fortress. They have seen none of the natives in the immediate neighborhood of the spot in which they had pitched their tents; but, aware of the wandering habits of the red-men, they might naturally look for them at any moment. Their toils, quickened by their caution, enabled them to make rapid progress. While they labored, they felt nothing of their loneliness. ”

“ The island colony proved valuable as a supply and repair station for traders and explorers, and thus served as a nucleus of both French and English settlement in America.
It is difficult for us of to-day to realize that, at any time in the world's history, enlightened folk should have thought good colonists could be made out of the sweepings of the jails and gutters of the Old World. ”

“ The nation at large, scarcely alive until now to the existence of the Colonies, was stung into Imperial consciousness by a national humiliation, for so it was not unnaturally regarded, coming from an obscure pastoral community confusedly identified as something between a Colony, a foreign power, and a troublesome native tribe. ”

“ How are we to determine the cola? The colon is the very soul of the rhythm. The period is generally too long for the ear to receive it as one artistic impression. The foot is too short; moreover, the mere foot too often tends to play one false: irrational syllables and τονή are against us. But the colon is neither too long nor too short. The colon-division serves the same purpose as non-commissioned officers in a regiment, or the determination of watersheds in geography—it gives a sense both of grouping and of control. ”