solid Reasoning and rational Grounds

"Of all the great Events that have happened in the World of late Ages, those which concern the Voyages and Discoveries, made by the Europeans in the fifteenth and sixteenth Centuries, do justly challenge the Preference... In the Merit and Glory of these Achievements, the Portugueze, without all Controversy are entitled to the first and principal Share...it must be confessed, that they first set on Foot the Navigation of the Ocean and put it into the Heads of other Nations, to go on the Discovery of distante Regions.

Other Nations were so far from being as early as the Portugueze in Attempts of this Kind, that these latter had been carrying on their Entreprizes, near fourscore Years, before any of their Neighbors seem to have thought of their Discoveries...the several events showed, that the Designs were the Results of solid Reasoning, and formed on the most rational Grounds"

(Thomas Astley, Voyages and Travels, in David S. Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, New York: Norton, 1999, p. 79)