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SETTLEMENTS ON THE DEMERARY, &C. 321 



to be occupied by British forces. No steps of the kind were 

 taken. Ignorance of the importance, which under our patron- 

 age these most valuable districts of South America were likely 

 to acquire, was, perhaps, in part the cause of the neglect. 

 But the statesmen of that day, if statesmen they can be called, 

 appear to have laboured under a worse, because more incurable, 

 disease than ignorance, under prejudice. They both professed 

 and fostered a culpable indifference to acquisition and empire, 

 and voluntarily shook the cohesion of provinces, which they 

 regarded as too extensive for a single seat of government. In 

 order to bestow liberty on North America, it was not necessary 

 to encourage independence; and thus to withdraw half the 

 naval population of English sailors from the obligation to 

 defend the mother country. 



From the peace of 1783 to the French revolution, the go- 

 vernment of Versailles was meritoriously attentive to the 

 improvement of Cayenne. Botanic gardens were founded 

 there, and the plants of the East Indies were brought at a con ■ 

 siderable expense, and cultivated in a sort of nursery for dis- 

 tribution among the planters ; cinnamon trees have thus been 

 propagated to some extent ; the bamboo would have been yet 

 more valuable. These scientific establishments have not been 

 perseveringly patronized ; but they have been instrumental to ■ 

 the introduction of novel articles of cultivation into San Do- ; 

 mingo ; and, through the fugitive planters from that scene of 



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