I was petrified with confusion and shame, on hearing my race thus described as pestiferous beings, spreading moral disease and contamination by their intercourse, and by thus seeing all my hopes of unbounded wealth at once laid prostrate; and I did not recover from the despondency which overwhelmed me, till I recollected that Mr. Boneto would no doubt have a full cargo of seal skins ready against my return to Seaborn's Land, which would ensure me a handsome fortune. Any attempt to dissuade the Best Man from his purpose, or to obtain a revocation of the decree, I knew would be altogether vain. I therefore endeavoured to soften the judgment he had formed of the externals, by representing the books, from which the Wise men and himself had drawn their opinions, to be the works of the islanders whom I had described to him as the supposed descendants of the Belzubians, and that they were only re-printed in my country as they had been in his; that we professed to be much more enlightened than those islanders, and styled ourselves emphatically the most enlightened people on the face of the earth, by which we meant no disrespect to the Symzonians, the face of the earth being the outside of it only, and we were not sufficiently enlightened, when the declaration was made, to know that there existed any such people; and that there were many people amongst us who would eagerly emulate the purity and goodness of the Symzonians, could they but have the benefit of their example, and behold the happiness which attended their course of life. I specified one numerous class in particular, who were remarkable for simplicity of habits, active benevolence, and good will towards mankind. I admitted that the permission of a free intercourse with the externals, might be productive of great mischief to his people, by introducing vice and disease, which had been observed to spring up amongst the South Sea islanders, and other unsophisticated nations, soon after their discovery by Europeans and Americans; but urged that a limited intercourse, under strict regulations, might be productive of much good; and that the Symzonians would, in that case, enjoy the sweet reflection, that they had contributed to the reformation of many of the externals, by the beauty and loveliness of their example, and at the same time have the benefit of more expanded views of the works of a beneficent Creator, through the information which they might derive from the externals.