It kept critics and dissenters away from the main population by imprisoning them in remote labor camps. Usually they were executed if they showed to be too much of a threat
The main way in which the nature of European exploration changed by the seventeenth century was that by this time, the major European powers such as Spain and Portugal had claimed large amounts of territory in the New World, and already exporting large amounts of natural resources back to their homeland.
The number of representatives a state gets is based on the population number in that state
Legislatures, and courts are the most effective anvenues for defending and expanding our rights and liberties