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But this is the age, in which those who could not read, have been supposed to write; in which the giants of antiquated romance have been exhibited as realities. If we know little of the ancient Highlanders, let us not fill the vacuity with Ossian. If we had not searched the Magellanick regions, let us however forbear to people them with Patagons.
It may, therefore, be safely pronounced, that those men are no patriots, who, when the national honour was vindicated in the sight of Europe, and the Spaniards having invaded what they call their own, had shrunk to a disavowal of their attempt, and a relaxation of their claim, would still have instigated us to a war, for a bleak and barren spot in the Magellanick ocean, of which no use could be made, unless it were a place of exile for the hypocrites of patriotism.
We were, at least, the general discoverers of the Magellanick region, and have hitherto held it with all its adjacencies.
Harris, the resident at Madrid, gave notice to lord Weymouth, of an account newly brought to Cadiz, that the English were in possession of port Cuizada, the same which we call port Egmont, in the Magellanick sea; that in January, they had warned away two Spanish ships; and that an armament was sent out in May, from Buenos Ayres, to dislodge them.
If we have not searched the Magellanick regions, let us however forbear to people them with Patagons. Johnson's Works, ix. 116. Captain Byron has found a nation of Brobdignags on the coast of Patagonia; the inhabitants on foot taller than he and his men on horseback. I don't indeed know how he and his sailors came to be riding in the South Seas.
A war declared for the empty sound of an ancient title to a Magellanick rock, would raise the indignation of the earth against us. These encroachers on the waste of nature, says our ally the Russian, if they succeed in their first effort of usurpation, will make war upon us for a title to Kamtschatka.
He then sent them a formal memorial, in which he maintained his master's right to the whole Magellanick region, and exhorted the English to retire quietly from the settlement, which they could neither justify by right, nor maintain by power.
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