Page:The Lusiad; Or, The Discovery of India.djvu/30

, which diffused the use of letters through the ancient, and Commerce will undoubtedly diffuse the same blessings through the modern world.

To this view of the political happiness, which is sure to be introduced in proportion to civilization, let the Divine add what may be reasonably expected from such opportunity of the increase of Religion. A factory of merchants, indeed, has seldom been found to be a school of piety; yet, when the general manners of a people become assimilated to those of a more rational worship, something more than ever was produced by an infant mission, or the neighbourhood of an infant colony, may then be reasonably expected, and even foretold.

In estimating the political happiness of a people, nothing is of greater importance than their capacity of, and tendency to, improvement. As a dead lake will continue in the same state for ages and ages, so would the bigotry and superstitions of the East continue the same. But if the lake is begun to be opened into a thousand rivulets, who knows over what unnumbered fields, barren before, they may diffuse the blessings of fertility, and turn a dreary wilderness into a land of society and joy.

In contrast to this, let the Golden Coast and other immense regions of Africa be contemplated:

X.

Let us view what millions of these unhappy savages are dragged from their native fields, and cut off for ever from all the hopes and all the rights to which human birth entitled them. And who would hesitate to pronounce that Negro the greatest of patriots, who, by teaching his countrymen the arts of society