sessour of a
country to admit a stranger more powerful than himself? Fraud or terrour
must operate in such contracts; either they promised protection which
they never have afforded, or instruction which they never imparted. We
hoped to be secured by their favour from some other evil, or to learn
the arts of Europe, by which we might be able to secure ourselves. Their
power they never have exerted in our defence, and their arts they have
studiously concealed from us. Their treaties are only to deceive, and
their traffick only to defraud us. They have a written law among them,
of which they boast, as derived from Him who made the earth and sea, and
by which they profess to believe that man will be made happy when life
shall forsake him. Why is not this law communicated to us? It is
concealed because it is violated. For how can they preach it to an
Indian nation, when I am told that one of its first precepts forbids
them to do to others what they would not that others should do to them?

"But the time, perhaps, is now approaching, when the pride of usurpation
shall be crushed, and the cruelties of invasion shall be revenged. The
sons of rapacity have now drawn their swords upon each other, and
referred their claims to the decision of war; let us look unconcerned
upon the slaughter, and remember that the death of every European
delivers the country from a tyrant and a robber; for what is the claim
of either nation, but the claim of the vulture to the leveret, of the
tiger to the fawn? Let them then continue to dispute their title to
regions which they cannot people, to purchase by danger and blood the
empty dignity of dominion over mountains which they will never climb,
and rivers which they will never pass. Let us endeavour, in the mean
time, to learn their discipline, and to forge their weapons; and, when
they shall be weakened with mutual slaughter, let us rush down upon
them, force their remains to take shelter in their ships, and reign once
more in our native country[1]."

[1] "How far the seizing on countries already peopled, and driving out
or massacring the innocent and defenceless natives, merely because
they differed from their invaders in language, in religion, in
customs, in government or in colour; how far such a conduct was
consonant to nature, to reason or to Christianity, deserved well to
be considered by those who have rendered their names immortal by
thus civilizing mankind." Black