Page:The life of Matthew Flinders.djvu/575

 (11) A third fishery, even more lucrative and important, is that of the skins of various varieties of seal which inhabit most of the islands of Bass Strait, all the Furneaux Islands, all the islands off the eastern coast of Van Diemen's Land, and all those on the south-west coast of New Holland, and which probably will be found upon the archipelagos of the eastern portion of this vast continent. The skins of these various species of seal are much desired in China. The sale of a shipload of these goods in that country is as rapid as it is lucrative. The ships engaged in the business are laden on their return to Europe with that precious merchandise of China which gold alone can extract from the clutch of its rapacious possessors. Accordingly, one of the most important objects of the mission of Lord Macartney to China, that of developing in that country a demand for some of the economic and manufacturing products of England, so as to relieve that country of the necessity of sending out such a mass of specie—that interesting object which all the ostentatious display of the commercial wealth of Europe had not been able to attain, and all the astute diplomacy of Lord Macartney had failed to achieve—the English have recently accomplished. Masters of the trade in these kinds of skin, they are about to become masters of the China trade. The coin accumulated in the coffers of the Government or of private people will no longer be sunk in the provinces of China. That advantage is incontestably one of the greatest that they have derived from their establishment at Port Jackson.

(12) This augmentation of distant possessions is likely to occasion a fresh development in the British