Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/551

PROPOSAL FOR A SETTLEMENT. 427 and if we were at war with Holland or Spain, we might very 1783 powerfully annoy either State from our new settlement Wo might, with a safe and expeditious voyage, make naval incursions value of on Java and the other Dutch settlements, and we might with * °fj^'** equal facility invade the coasts of Spanish America, and intercept the Manilla ships laden with the treasures of the West. This check which New South Wales would be in time of war on both those Powers, makes it a very important object when we view it in the chart of the world with a political eye. Sir Joseph Banks's high approbation of the scheme which I have nanks'a here proposed deserves the most respectful attention of every sen- effied to sible, liberal, and spirited individual amongst his countrymen. The attention, language of encomium applied to this gentleman would surely be inequitably censured as the language of adulation. To spurn the alluring pleasures which fortune procures in a frivolous and luxurious age, and to encounter extreme difficulties and dangers in pursuit of discoveries which are of great benefit to mankind, is a very complicated and illustrious event, as useful as it is rare, and which calls for the wannest public gratitude and esteem. I shall take this opportunity to make a remark on colonisation coionisa^ which has not occun*ed to me in any author, and which I flatter ^^^^ myself will contain some important civil and political truth. Too great a diminution of inhabitants of the mother country is Depopuia- commonly apprehended from voluntary emigration, an apprehen- ^^^ ti»«>ry. sion which seems to me not to be the result of mature reflection. That we almost universally have a strong afiection for our native soil is an observation as true as it is old — it is founded on the aflections of human nature. Not only a Swiss, but even an Ice- lander, when he is abroad, sickens and languishes in his absence from his native country; therefore few of any country will ever Love of think of settling in any foreign part of the world, from a restless ^^y- mind and from romantic views. A man's affairs are generally in a very distressed, in a very desperate, situation, when he resolves Poverty the to take a long adieu of his native soil, and of connections which ISS^aUon, must be always dear to him. Hence a body of emigrants — nay, a numerous body of emigrants — may, in a commercial view, be of great and permanent service to their parent community in some remote part of the world, who, if they continue at home, will pro- bably live to see their own ruin, and will be very prejudicial to and crime, society. Tlie politician of an expanded mind reasons from the almost invariable actions of human nature; the doctrine of the petty statesman is hardly applicable to a larger extent than that Emigration of his own closet. When our circumstances are adverse in the y^^^' extreme, they very often produce illegal and rapacious conduct. If a poor man of broken fortunes and of any pretensions be timid in his nature, he most probably becomes a useless, if he has an ardent spirit, he becomes a bad and a criminal, citizen. There are Digitized by Google