TRAVELS IN 
of Good Hope remained a Brltifli colony. It would have been 
a defirable objeffc then to retain pofieflion of a ftation which 
would effe£tually have excluded them from the Indian Seas j and 
which always v\^ould have enabled us to confine them to their 
ufelefs iflands of France and Bourbon. 
Of one thing England may be well afTured, that the deftruc- 
tion of its commerce, as the fource from whence its power and 
affluence are derived, is a fentiment fo deeply rooted in the mind 
of the Corfican that, fo long as it continues to flourifh, his 
irafcible and vindidive temper will not allow him to keep on 
any terms of friendfhip with us. He is well aware that our 
commerce is our great fupport, that, as Mr. Delacroix ob- 
ferved, it enabled us to fubfidize all Europe againft them ; and 
that if he could once break up our commerce to India and China, 
and fhut us out from the Mediterranean, the grand bulwark that 
now {lands between him and univerfal fovereignty would, in a 
great degree, be removed. 
Should his views, unhappily for the world, ever be accom- 
plifhed, an age of barbarifm would return, ten times darker 
than that which followed the irruption of the northern hordes. 
A deadly blow would be ftruck at once to the liberty of the 
prefs ; nothing would be written, nor printed, nor tolerated, but 
what the fovereign defpot fhould find conducive to his univerfal 
fway. The time would then come when legit ut clericus, in- 
ftead of faving a man from death would be the fure means of 
bringing him to his end. 
It 
