S04 TRAVELS IN 
except France, could feel any jealousj^ nor entertain reason- 
abie grounds of objection against the Cape becoming a set- 
tlement of tlie British Empire. They were all allowed to trade 
and to refresh on the same terms as British subjects, with this 
single exception, that an additional duty of 5 per cent, was 
payable on all goods brought into the Colony in foreign 
bottoms. 
The possession of this settlement, at an carlj'^ period of the 
war, so completely excluded every hostile power from the 
Indian seas, threw so great an increase of commerce into our 
hands by that exclusion, left us in such quiet and undisturbed 
dominion in the eastern world, and gave us so many solid 
advantages unexampled in any former war, that one would 
suppose it a moral impossibility for the East India Company 
to be unmindful of the source from whence they sprung. But 
things that are apparently of little value in themselves, are 
sometimes magnified by intense observation, swell into im- 
portance by discussion, and become indispensable by^ conten- 
tion ; whilst objects of real moment lose their magnitude 
when slightly viewed, or seen only at a distance, grow little 
by neglect, and useless without a quarrel. This observation 
may probably be applied to Malta and the Cape of Good 
Plope. Respecting the importance of the latter, the French 
seem to have avoided any discussion in the late negociation 
for peace. Their views were, no doubt, well known to our 
Government, and might have induced it, in the very first 
sketch of the conditions of peace, to propose that the Cape 
of Good Hope should be restored to the Dutch, or be de- 
clared a free port. The latterj however, happening to be just 
