Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 3.djvu/269

 EUROPEAN NATIONS. 253 honour, were pursuing a mischievous phantom. During all the time of the American trade, it has never connected itself with any political concern of the natives, never embroiled itself in their quar- rels ; nor has any American ship ever been cut off' by the rudest tribe they have dealt with. In the very vicinage of our powerful establishments, they are now pushing their enterprises in situations that we have neglected for more than a century, and, by their conciliatory conduct, retrieving that cha- racter which their progenitors had lost. Their trade, in all this time, has been progressively flourishing, and, without entering into the question of its in- trinsic superiority over the trade of the former mas- ters of the Indian commerce, is, in point of mere quantity, incomparably more extensive. If it should be objected, that a period of thirty-six years does not afford us sufficient time to judge of the moderation of the Americans, and of the success of their mode of carrying on the Indian trade, its im- measurable advantage over the monopoly system may, at all events, be proved, when it is remem- bered that the Dutch and English had been little more than half this time engaged in the same trade, when they had already quarrelled with and insulted every maritime power in the Indies, in- vaded, conquered, and plundered those who had received them hospitably, quarrelled with and mas- sacred one another j and, by all these means, sub-