Falkland Island,
which seemed too remote and romantic an object for the grasp of national
ambition, is but a stage and resting-place in the progress of their victorious
industry. Nor is the equinoctial heat more discouraging to them than the
accumulated winter of both the poles. We know that whilst some of them draw the
line and strike the harpoon on the coast of Africa, others run the longitude and
pursue their gigantic game along the coast of Brazil. No sea but what is vexed
by their fisheries; no climate that is not witness to their toils. Neither the
perseverance of Holland, nor the activity of France, nor the dexterous and firm
sagacity of English enterprise ever carried this most perilous mode of hardy
industry to the extent to which it has been pushed by this recent people; a
people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into
the bone of manhood. When I contemplate these things; when I know that the
Colonies in general owe little or nothing to any care of ours, and that they are
not squeezed into this happy form by the constraints of watchful and suspicious
government, but that, through a wise and salutary neglect, a generous nature has
been suffered to take her own way to perfection; when I reflect upon these
effects, when I see how profitable they have been to us, I feel all the pride of
power sink, and all presumption in the wisdom of human contrivances melt and die
away within me.
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