Key Arguments

• After narrating multiple colonial experiences, Smith distills their common features in a single sentence: 'Plenty of good land, and liberty to manage their own affairs their own way, seem to be the two great causes of the prosperity of all new colonies.'
• Earlier in the same passage he had shown that plentiful land can overcome even 'the very worst government,' and that partial freedom (e.g., free ports, relaxed monopolies) significantly enhances prosperity.
• His earlier examples of colonies like St. Domingo under loose or gentle authority, and Curacoa and Eustatia as free ports, illustrate how greater self-management and commercial liberty correlate with faster population and economic growth.

Source Quotes

But there are no colonies of which the progress has been more rapid than that of the English in North America. Plenty of good land, and liberty to manage their own affairs their own way, seem to be the two great causes of the prosperity of all new colonies. In the plenty of good land, the English colonies of North America, though no doubt very abundantly provided, are, however, inferior to those of the Spaniards and Portuguese, and not superior to some of those possessed by the French before the late war.

The colony of Nova Belgia, now divided into the two provinces of New York and New Jersey, would probably have soon become considerable too, even though it had remained under the government of the Dutch. The plenty and cheapness of good land are such powerful causes of prosperity, that the very worst government is scarce capable of checking altogether the efficacy of their operation. The great distance, too, from the mother country, would enable the colonists to evade more or less, by smuggling, the monopoly which the company enjoyed against them.

Key Concepts

• Plenty of good land, and liberty to manage their own affairs their own way, seem to be the two great causes of the prosperity of all new colonies.
• The plenty and cheapness of good land are such powerful causes of prosperity, that the very worst government is scarce capable of checking altogether the efficacy of their operation.

Context

This sentence appears as Smith’s explicit theoretical summary after discussing the relative success of different European colonies in the Americas and West Indies.