Scarcely any degree of judgment is sufficient to restrain the imagination from magnifying that on which it is long detained.  The relater of Anson’s voyage had heated his mind with its various events; had partaken the hope with which it was begun, and the vexation suffered by its various miscarriages, and then thought nothing could be of greater benefit to the nation, than that which might promote the success of such another enterprise.

Had the heroes of that history even performed and attained all that, when they first spread their sails, they ventured to hope, the consequence would yet have produced very little hurt to the Spaniards, and very little benefit to the English.  They would have taken a few towns; Anson and his companions would have shared the plunder or the ransome; and the Spaniards, finding their southern territories accessible, would, for the future, have guarded them better.

That such a settlement may be of use in war, no man, that considers its situation, will deny.  But war is not the whole business of life; it happens but seldom, and every man, either good or wise, wishes that its frequency were still less.  That conduct which betrays designs of future hostility, if it does not excite violence, will always generate malignity; it must for ever exclude confidence and friendship, and continue a cold and sluggish rivalry, by a sly reciprocation of indirect injuries, without the bravery of war or the security of peace.

The advantage of such a settlement, in time of peace, is, I think, not easily to be proved.  For what use can it have, but of a station for contraband traders, a nursery of fraud, and a receptacle of theft!  Narborough, about a century ago, was of opinion, that no advantage could be obtained in voyages to the South sea, except by such an armament as, with a sailor’s morality, might trade by force.  It is well known, that the prohibitions of foreign commerce, are, in these countries, to the last degree, rigorous, and that no man, not authorized by the king of Spain, can trade there but by force or stealth.  Whatever profit is obtained must be gained by the violence of rapine, or dexterity of fraud.

Government will not, perhaps, soon arrive at such purity and excellence, but that some connivance, at least, will be indulged to the triumphant robber and successful cheat.  He that brings wealth home is seldom interrogated by what means it was obtained.  This, however, is one of those modes of corruption with which mankind ought always to struggle, and which they may, in time, hope to overcome.  There is reason to expect, that, as the world is more enlightened, policy and morality will, at last, be reconciled, and that nations will learn not to do what they would not suffer.