Page:Journal of a Voyage to Greenland, in the Year 1821.djvu/7

Rh perseverance had been requisite, I should have found it in the zealous desire to shew gratitude to my country for that generous patronage, which had enabled me to carry into execution my invention for protection her seamen from the horrors of a watery grave. I shall be pardoned if I here remark, with some degree of pride and satisfaction, that this invention, has already been crowned with success in the preservation of ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-SIX PERSONS, as well foreigners as natives, saved within my own immediate knowledge, who, under Heaven, are indebted for their lives to the philanthropy of the British Government.

It was under the influence of these feelings, that I became a painful observer of the consequences entailed upon the port of Yarmouth by the general stagnation of trade and commercial difficulty, which unhappily visited this empire for years after the return of peace. The effects of this total suspension of mercantile activity were distressingly visible in the forest