The eyes of the best-informed men in Britain were now open to the disadvantageous and timid policy, of conducting this momentous war by petty expeditions and experimental armaments, too inadequate to the service to be productive of any thing but disappointment. The paltry idea of making war for British objects, as it was called, that is, withholding from the general cause those efforts which might have saved our allies, and going in search of some petty object in which Britain might see an individual interest, was now universally acknowledged; although it became more difficult than ever to select points of attack where our limited means might command success. It was also pretty distinctly seen, that the plan of opening a market for British manufactures, by conquering distant and unhealthy provinces, was as idle as immoral. In the latter quality, it somewhat resembled the proceedings of the surgeon mentioned in Le Sage's satirical novel, who converted passengers into patients by a stroke of his poniard, and then hastened, in his medical capacity, to cure the wounds he had inflicted. In point of profit, we had frequently to regret, that the colonists, whom we proposed to convert by force of arms into customers for British goods, were too rude to want, and too poor to pay for them. Nothing deceives itself so willingly as the love of gain. Our principal merchants and manufacturers, among other commercial visions, had imagined to themselves an unlimited market for British commodities, in the immense plains surrounding Buenos Ayres, which are, in fact, peopled by a sort of Christian savages called Gauchos, whose principal furniture is the skulls of dead horses, whose only food is raw beef and water, whose sole employment is to catch wild cattle, by hampering them with a Gaucho's noose, and whose chief amusement is to ride wild horses to death.[298] Unfortunately, they were found to prefer their national independence to cottons and muslins.