The views of men in founding colonies, have varied in different ages of the world. Although, however, some special inducement may have been pre-eminent at different times, yet a multiplicity of motives have generally combined in leading to such undertakings. Hannibal found the municipal cities, or Roman colonies of Italy, the obstacles to his conquest of the republic. It was with provident anticipation of such an effect that they were founded. Lima in Peru, and other places in Brazil and elsewhere, had their origin in similar aims. Differences in political views have led to the foundation of many colonies; and, superadded to these, religious considerations have had their influence in the settlement of some of the early North American colonies. In the small republics of Greece, the seditious, or the criminal--sometimes whole classes of men, whose residence was unsuitable to the general interests--were cast adrift to go where they chose, probably making a general jail delivery for the time being. Modern efforts of the kind are, upon the whole, more systematic. A colony sent for settlement or for subsistence, is purely so. A military colony is purely military, or, more generally, is nothing else than a garrison. A colony of criminals is restricted to the criminals. In this case a new element characterizes the modern system, for the object is not merely to remove the criminal, but to reform him. England has done much in this way. It is a great result, that in Australia there are now powerful communities, rich with the highest elements of civilization; constituted to a great extent of those who otherwise, as the children of criminals, would have been born to wretchedness and depravity, to cells and stripes and brandings and gibbets, as their inheritance. But such experiments are not capable of indefinite repetition; space is wanting for them in the world. Nations are now called by the imperious force of circumstances, or more properly speaking, by the decree of Providence, to the nobler task of preventing rather than punishing; of raising society from the pollution of vice rather than curing or expelling it. This higher effort, which is natural to the spirit of Christianity, should have accompanied it everywhere. A nation is responsible for its inhabitants, and ought to master whatever tends to crime among them. Those whom it sends abroad should be its citizens, not its reprobates. It owes to the world, that the average amount of virtue in it accompany its transferred communities, so that the world does not suffer by the transference. This must be the case when a race unsuitably placed is, on account of that unsuitableness only, transported to a location more suitable.