Page:An account of a voyage to establish a colony at Port Philip in Bass's Strait.djvu/135

( 110 ) viva voce, and upon honour. Should the irritated colonists be driven to extremities the mother-country will probably find too late, that though a disease at its commencement may be removed by gentle remedies, it will, by neglect, soon grow too powerful for the most desperate; The spirit of revolution which, like the element of fire, seems to pervade the habitable globe, at the present moment, is rapidly gaining strength, in these trans-atlantic regions. The philosophy of Helvetius, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Volney, has here its admirers and supporters, who only wait the favourable moment to kindle the latent sparks into flame. These principles are chiefly circulated and extended by a masonic society; which neither the tic