of this kind have miscarried from one ship’s being obliged to wait for the other, or losing time in looking out for the other.

Within these two days I have looked over everything I can find relating to the Roman Colonys.  I have not yet found anything of much consequence.  They were governed upon the model of the Republic:  had two consuls called duumviri; a senate called decuriones or collegium decurionum, and other magistrates similar to those of the Republic.  The colonists lost their right of voting or of being elected to any magistracy in the Roman comitia.  In this respect they were inferior to many municipia.  They retained, however, all the other privileges of Roman citizens.  They seem to have been very independent.  Of thirty colonies of whom the Romans demanded troops in the second Carthaginian war, twelve refused to obey.  They frequently rebelled and joined the enemies of the Republic; being in some measure little independent republics, they naturally followed the interests which their peculiar situation pointed out to them.—­I have the honour to be, with the highest regard, my lord, your lordship’s most obedient humble servant,

     ADAM SMITH.

     Tuesday, 12th February 1767.[198]

The problem of colonial rights and responsibilities had just come rapidly to the forefront of public questions in England.  The abandonment of North America by the French in 1763 had given a new importance to the plantations, and seemed to develop at the same time a stronger disposition to assert colonial rights on the one side of the Atlantic, and to interfere with them on the other.  The Stamp Act of 1765 had already begun the struggle against imperial taxation which Charles Townshend’s tea duty, imposed a few months after this letter was written, was to precipitate into rebellion.  There was therefore very good reason why statesmen like Lord Shelburne should be studying the relations of dependencies to mother countries, and turning their attention to earlier colonial experiments such as those of ancient Rome.  It will be observed that Smith came in the Wealth of Nations to modify somewhat the view he expresses in this letter of the independence of the Roman colonies, and explains that the reason they were less prosperous than the Greek colonies was because they were not, like the latter, independent, and were “not always at liberty to manage their own affairs in the way that they judged most suitable to their own interest."[199]

Smith’s absent-minded habit, while it seems from various accounts to have been lessened by his travels abroad, was not entirely removed by them, for on the 11th of February 1767 Lady Mary Coke writes her sister that Lady George Lennox and Sir Gilbert Elliot had happened to meet while visiting her, and had talked of “Mr. Smith, the gentleman that went abroad with the Duke of Buccleugh,” saying many things in his praise, but adding that he was