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Allegory
Explanation and Analysis—Colonies:
Further expanding upon his central allegory of the “body politic” (the collective body of the state), Hobbes considers the question of colonies, concluding that they are the “Children of a Common-wealth”:
The Procreation, or Children of a Common-wealth, are those we call Plantations, or Colonies; which are numbers of men sent out from the Common-wealth, under a Conductor, or Governour, to inhabit a Forraign Country [...] And when a Colony is setled, they are either a Common-wealth of themselves, discharged of their subjection to their Soveraign that sent them, (as hath been done by many Common-wealths of antient time,) in which case the Common-wealth from which they went was called their Metropolis, or Mother, and requires no more of them, then Fathers require of the Children [...] or else they remain united to their Metropolis.
Much as an individual body can procreate and bear children, so too can the collective body politic reproduce by establishing “Plantations, or Colonies,” sending its own citizens abroad in order to claim possession of some territory, either uninhabited or defeated by the colonists. He then further divides colonies into two types: those that “remain united” to the original state, and those that became a “Common-wealth of themselves” by casting off their original sovereign.
A state, Hobbes suggests, has no right to make any demands of a colony that has decided to become its own state, in much the same way that a father must accept that a child has reached adulthood and gained independence. This is one of many instances in the book of Hobbes developing his central allegory, examining various civil questions through the lens of the body.
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