common to be enlarged upon. A sea captain first spying a rock in the fifteenth century; perhaps a cross, or a coat of arms set up to the view of a few miles of coast by an adventurer, or even by a shipwrecked crew, gave the first claims to Kings and archpirates over an unknown tract of country. This transitory seizure sometimes obtained the venerable confirmation of an old priest at Rome (who, a century or two before, had in his infallibility pronounced that the existence of such a country was impossible), or of a still more politic, though not less interested Privy Council at home. Sometimes, indeed, if the discoverers were conscientious, they made a legal purchase to all eternity, of empires and posterity from a parcel of naked natives, for a handful of glass beads and baubles. Maryland, I think, was solemnly acquired at the extravagant rate of a quantity of vermilion and Jew’s-harps: I don’t know whether the authentic instrument may not be recorded in that Christian depository the Court of Chancery. By means so holy, a few Princes, who would be puzzled to produce a legitimate title to their own dominions in Europe, were wafted into rights and prerogatives over the boundless regions of America. Detachments were sent to take possession of the new discoveries; they peopled the seaports, they sprinkled themselves over the coasts, they enslaved or assisted the wretched natives to butcher one another, instructed them in the use of firearms, of brandy, and the New Testament, and at last, by scattered extension of forts and colonies, they have met to quarrel for the boundaries of Empires, of which they can neither use nor occupy a twentieth part of the included territory.