ed 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 h