374 THE AMERICAN LOYALISTS 1789 The loyalists could have done all these things simply because they and their fathers had already done them in America. The hardships and privations of the settlers in a new country were known to them from experience ; ^oioniiu they were familiar with the habits of savages, and they had been accustomed to see the convict working in their fields. Thus they were armed at all points with the prac- tical knowledge and experience which would have proved invaluable in developing the resources of this country. Had they been sent out to New South Wales in suffi- cient numbers, with convict labour to assist them on the plan suggested by Phillip, they would have brought about far more striking results than they accomplished in British America. They would have saved the colony from the protracted agonies of famine and misery of all kinds Enersry and which it had to euduro for years after its foundation ; and they would have given a character of energy and enterprise to the population, which would have enabled it to overcome with comparative ease all the diflSculties it had to encounter in subsequent stages of its history."'^ As it may be assumed that the question whether the The Govern- loyalists should be encouraged to settle in New South Wales ment policy. « • i i i t r^ was luUy considered by the Grovernment m connection with, the expedition to Botany Bay, it is worth while to examine cruise with five other ships soon afterwards, and on his return in a few weeks reported that " upwards of fifteen thousand whales were seen in the first ten days that he was absent, the greater number of which were observed off this harbour." — CoUins, p. 187 ; Tench, Complete Account, p. 209. Cook makes no mention of whales in these seas ; but Dampier noticed them in large numbers off the west coast in 1699 : — "The Sea is plentifully stock'd with the largest Whales that I ever saw."— Vol. iii» p. 106.
- Burke's description of the enterprise shown by the American colonists,
particularly as regards their whale fisheries, forms one of the most striking passages in his speech on Conciliation with America, 1775. — *' Look at the manner in which the people of New England have of late carried on the whale fishery. Neither the perseverance of Holland, nor the activity of France, nor the dexterous and firm sagacity of English enterprise, ever carried this most perilous mode of hardy industry to the extent to which it has been pushed by this recent people ; a people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood." Digitized by Google
