Page:Memoirs of a Huguenot Family.djvu/401

 Rh to extend the empire and augment the strength of our mother island, as that would be diffusing liberty both civil and religious, and her daughter Felicity the wider, and at the same time be a means of aggrandizing and enriching this spot of the globe, to which every civil and social tie binds me, and for which I have the tenderest regard.

But, these pleasing expectations, if not entirely vanished, are much weakened and suspended, till Heaven decide the controversy between the two mighty monarchs now contending, in some sort, for the empire of the world.

Sir, as these lands now in dispute are so immensely valuable, what reason can you assign why most of the great men with you, and why persons of the highest rank here, with very few exceptions, either were, or seemed to be, quite unacquainted with its value till of late? I know the reason of it here. Great men are too wise to be informed. They are too indolent to look about them; therefore their views and notions of matters of this nature, are contracted within so narrow a compass, that they think nothing worth their inquiry beyond their own reach. And, when men of inferior fortune, but not therefore of inferior merit, have been animated by a principle both of industry and public spirit, to search unknown forests and wilds, and made discoveries valuable and important to the State, and imparted them to these epicurean gods, they either discountenance, disregard, or discredit them. This, in too many instances, has been the misfortune here, though not in all, as you will perceive by the scheme communicated above, which is an instance to the contrary, provided my conjecture be correct, that it was originally formed here. On the other hand, our politic and sagacious, though turbulent neighbors, leave nothing unattempted to extend the