Page:Essay on the government of dependencies.djvu/13

 of the political relation in question should be formed.

The following essay is intended to explain the third of the three subjects above adverted to, viz., the nature of the political relation of supremacy and dependence, and to develope some of the principal consequences which that relation involves.

For the purpose of elucidating fully the ideas included in the notion of a subordinate government (upon which the definition of a dependency adopted in the ensuing pages is founded), I have prefixed to the essay an inquiry, in which I have attempted to explain the distinction between supreme and subordinate powers of government, together with some other questions related to it. This preliminary inquiry is detached from the essay, and the latter may be read without it.

The essay itself falls into two parts. One part considers the ideas which the relation of supremacy and dependence necessarily implies, and without which it cannot be Conceived to exist. The other part considers the advantages and disadvantages arising to the two related communities from their connexion with each other. The expediency or inexpediency of this connexion to each of the two communities is determined by facts which vary infinitely, and which cannot be comprehended in any general expression. Nevertheless there are certain leading facts which, though not universal, reappear with such steadiness and uniformity in