From a Prison in Brazil—1774

Abstract

Edmund Burke was much troubled in 1775 by the deteriorating relations between Great Britain and her North American dependencies. Even so grave a crisis, however, did not prevent him from noting and extolling “the manner in which the people of New England have of late carried on the whale fishery.” New England whalers were sailing to places as remote as the South Atlantic Falkland Islands “in the progress of their victorious industry.”