Publisher's Synopsis
Public utility of voyages--Peculiar circumstances of this--New Holland properly a continent--Reasons for fixing our settlement there--Transportation to America, its origin, advantages, and cessation--Experiments made--The present plan adopted--Disadvantages of other expedients. From voyages undertaken expressly for the purpose of discovery, the public naturally looks for information of various kinds: and it is a fact which we cannot but contemplate with pleasure, that by the excellent publications subsequent to such enterprises, very considerable additions have been made, during the present reign, to our general knowledge of the globe, of the various tribes by which it is peopled, and of the animals and vegetables to which it gives support. An expedition occasioned by motives of legislative policy, carried on by public authority, and concluded by a fixed establishment in a country very remote, not only excites an unusual interest concerning the fate of those sent out, but promises to lead us to some points of knowledge which, by the former mode, however judiciously employed, could not have been attained. A transient visit to the coast of a great continent cannot, in the nature of things, produce a complete information respecting its inhabitants, productions, soil, or climate: all which when contemplated by resident observers, in every possible circumstance of variation, though they should be viewed with less philosophical acuteness, must yet gradually become more fully known: Errors, sometimes inseparable from hasty observation, will then be corrected by infallible experience; and many objects will present themselves to view, which before had escaped notice, or had happened to be so situated that they could not be observed.
