When Admiral Dalrymple turned farmer, he mentions in one of his letters, the sufferings his unhappy ignorance of all agricultural pursuits involved him in, and feelingly tells us: "I have given ten pounds for a dunghill, and would now willingly give any man twenty, to tell me what to do with it." This was exactly the case with the Belgians. They had bought a steam-ship, they put coals in her, and a crew; and then, for the life and soul of them, they did not know what to do with them.
They desired an export trade--a _débouché_ for their Namur cutlery and Venders' frieze. But where could they go? They had no colonies. Holland had, to be sure: but then, they had quarrelled with Holland, and there was no use repining. "What can't be cured," &c. Besides, if they had lost a colony, they had gained a cardinal; and if they had no merchantmen, they had at least high-mass; and if they were excluded from Batavia, why they had free access t the "Abbé Boon."
There were, however, some impracticable people engaged in traffic, who would not listen to these great advantages, and who were obstinate enough to suppose that the country was as prosperous when it had a market for its productions, as it was when it had none. And although the priests, who have multiplied some hundredfold since the revolution, were willing "to consume" to any extent, yet, unhappily, they were not as profitable customers as their _ci-devant_ friends beyond sea.
Nothing then remained but to have a colony, and after much consideration, long thought, and anxious deliberation, it was announced to the chamber that the Belgians had a colony, and that the colony was called "Guatemala."
When Sancho Panza appealed to Don Quixote, to realise his promised dream of greatness, you may remember, he always asked for an island: "Make me governor of an island!" There was something defined, accurate, and tangible, as it were, in the sea-girt possession, that suggested to the honest squire's mind the idea of perfect, independent rule. And in the same way, the Belgians desired to have an island.
Some few, less imaginative, suspected, however, that an island must always have its limit to importation quicker attained than a continent, and they preferred some vast, unexplored tract, like India, or Central America, where the consumption of corduroy and cast-iron might have an unexhausted traffic for centuries.