in fact, can receive neither injury nor advantage from any decision that is given to it.  The real friends of that cause attach little importance to any weight of human argument in its favour, and rest entirely on divine evidence, for both the painful and the comfortable effects it produces on their consciences.  Any other, they are sure, may indeed furnish matter for the display of ingenuity and learning, but will fall short of that conviction which secures self-denied obedience to its precepts.—­E.]

6.  Hitherto we have considered our voyages as having benefited the discoverers.  But it will be asked, Have they conveyed, or are they likely ever to convey, any benefit to the discovered?  It would afford exquisite satisfaction to every benevolent mind, to be instructed in facts, which might enable us, without hesitation, to answer this question in the affirmative.  And yet, perhaps, we may indulge the pleasing hope, that, even in this respect, our ships have not sailed in vain.  Other discoveries of new countries have, in effect, been wars, or rather massacres; nations have been no sooner found out, than they have been extirpated; and the horrid cruelties of the conquerors of Mexico and Peru can never be remembered, without blushing for religion and human nature.  But when the recesses of the globe are investigated, not to enlarge private dominion, but to promote general knowledge; when we visit new tribes of our fellow-creatures as friends; and wish only to learn that they exist, in order to bring them within the pale of the offices of humanity, and to relieve the wants of their imperfect state of society, by communicating to them our superior attainments; voyages of discovery planned with such benevolent views by George the Third, and executed by Cook, have not, we trust, totally failed in this respect.  Our repeated visits, and long-continued intercourse with the natives of the Friendly, Society, and Sandwich Islands, cannot but have darted some rays of light on the infant minds of those poor people.  The uncommon objects they have thus had opportunities of observing and admiring, will naturally tend to enlarge their stock of ideas, and to furnish new materials for the exercise of their reason.  Comparing themselves with their visitors, they cannot but be struck with the deepest conviction of their own inferiority, and be impelled, by the strongest motives, to strive to emerge from it, and to rise nearer to a level with those children of the Sun, who deigned to look upon them, and left behind so many specimens of their generous and humane attention.  The very introduction of our useful animals and vegetables, by adding fresh means of subsistence, will have added to their comforts of life, and immediate enjoyments; and if this be the only benefit they are ever to receive, who will pronounce that much has not been gained?  But may we not carry our wishes and our hopes still farther?  Great Britain itself, when, first visited by the Phoenicians,