Page:Essay on the government of dependencies.djvu/12

 and dependence: in other words, the relations between two political communities, of which one is dominant and the other dependent; both being governed by a common supreme government, the one directly and the other indirectly; and the latter being governed directly by a subordinate government.

The third, although it coincides in some respects with the other two subjects, is nevertheless essentially distinguished from both of them. With the first, it comprehends a supreme government, but considers it only in its relations with a community which it rules indirectly, and not in its relations with its immediate subjects. With the second, it considers the relations of separate communities, but differs from it, in not considering the relations of independent communities.

The third subject has not hitherto, as far as I am aware, been professedly examined in a separate investigation. Whenever the subject has been considered by political writers, it has been considered only incidentally, and in combination with colonization, foreign trade, and other questions belonging to the province of economical science. This incidental consideration of the subject, in combination with other matters having no essential affinity with it, has naturally thrown over it a general indistinctness and obscurity. Thus, for example, the idea of a dependency is by many writers confounded with that of a colony; a confusion which renders it nearly impossible that a clear and precise concep-