i84 TRAVELS IN 
to tliefe iflands from France, nor from thence to India. The 
trade of the Americans fufFered no interruption in the Eaftsrn 
Seas, nor that of the Portugueze in the Southern Atlantic. In the 
hands of the French it would have been a point equally conve- 
nient for affifting the Spaniards at Rio de la Plata, or attacking 
the Portugueze at Rio de Janeiro : whilft againfl: us it would 
have furniflied the mod effedual means of endangering the 
fecurity to our Indian trade and fettlements. 
The poffcflion of this place, at an early period of the war, 
fo completely excluded every hoftile power from the Indian 
Seas, threw fo great arf increafe of commerce into our hands by 
that exclufion, left us in fuch quiet and undifturbed doniinioa 
in the eaftern world, and gave us fo many folid advantages un- 
exampled in any former vv^ar, that one would fuppofe it to be 
a moral impoffibility for the Eaft India Company to be unmind- 
ful of the fource from whence they fprung. But things that 
are apparently of little value in themfelves, are fometimes mag- 
nified by intenfe obfervation, fwell into importance by difcuf- 
fion, and become indifpenfable by contention; whilft objedls of 
real moment lofe their magnitude when flightly viewed, or feen 
only at a diftance, grow little by negleifl, and ufelefs without a 
quarreh 
The French feem to have been aware of the truth of this ob- 
fervation, by avoiding any difcuffion, in the late negociation 
for peace, refpedling the importance of the Cape of Good Hope. 
Their views, no doubt, were well known to our Government, 
which induced it, in the very firft fketch of the conditions of 
peace 
