But they possessed other advantages, in which, beyond all comparison, they excelled former discoverers. In place of hearts confused with fantastic notions of honour and emulation, which constantly led to bloodshed, theirs were filled with the most beneficent principles, with that noble persuasion, the foundation of all charity, not that all men are equal, but that they are all brethren; and that being superior to the savage in every acquirement, it was for that very reason their duty to set the example of mildness, compassion, and long-suffering to a fellow-creature, because the weakest, and, by no fault of his own, the least instructed, and always perfectly in their power. Thus, without the usual, and most unwarrantable excesses, the overturning ancient, hereditary kingdoms, without bloodshed, or trampling under foot the laws of society and hospitality, Your MAJESTY‘s subjects, braver, more powerful and instructed than those destroyers of old, but far more just, generous, and humane, erected in the hearts of an unknown people, while making these discoveries, an empire founded on peace and love of the subject, perfectly consistent with those principles by which Your MAJESTY has always professed to govern; more firm and durable than those established by bolts and chains, and all those black devices of tyrants not even known by name, in Your happy and united, powerful and flourishing kingdoms. While these great objects were steadily conducting to the end which the capacity of those employed, the justness of the measures on which they were planned, and the constant care and support of the Public promised, there still remained an expedition to be undertaken which had been long called for, by philosophers of all nations, in vain. Fleets and armies were useless; even the power of Britain, with the utmost exertion, could afford no protection there, the place was so unhappily cut off from the rest of mankind, that even Your MAJESTY‘s name and virtues had never yet been known or heard of there. The situation of the country was barely known, no more: placed under the most inclement skies, in part surrounded by impenetrable forests, where, from the beginning, the beasts had established a sovereignty uninterrupted by man, in part by vast deserts of moving sands, where nothing was to be found that had the breath of life, these terrible barriers inclosed men more bloody and ferocious than the beasts themselves, and more fatal to travellers than the sands that encompassed them; and thus shut up, they had been long growing every day more barbarous, and defied, by rendering it dangerous, the curiosity of travellers of every nation.