ce or lust? I have been an eye
witness to such cruel treatment of the Indians, as is too horrid to be
mentioned at this time.--It is said that barbarous executions were
necessary to punish or check the rebellion of the Americans;--but to
whom was this owing? Did not those people receive the Spaniards, who
first came amongst them, with gentleness and humanity? Did they not shew
more joy, in proportion, in lavishing treasure upon them, than the
Spaniards did greediness in receiving it?--But our avarice was not yet
satisfied;--tho' they gave up to us their land and their riches, we
would tear from them their wives, their children and their
liberties.--To blacken these unhappy people, their enemies assert, that
they are scarce human creatures?--but it is we that ought to blush, for
having been less men, and more barbarous, than they.--What right have we
to enslave a people who are born free, and whom we disturbed, tho' they
never offended us?--They are represented as a stupid people, addicted to
vice?--but have they not contracted most of their vices from the example
of the christians? And as to those vices peculiar to themselves, have
not the christians quickly exceeded them therein? Nevertheless it must
be granted, that the Indians still remain untainted with many vices
usual amongst the Europeans; such as ambition, blasphemy, treachery, and
many like monsters, which have not yet took place with them; they have
scarce an idea of them; so that in effect, all the advantage we can
claim, is to have more elevated notions of things, and our natural
faculties more unfolded and more cultivated than theirs.--Do not let us
flatter our corruptions, nor voluntarily blind ourselves; _all_ nations
are equally _free_; one nation has no right to infringe upon the freedom
of any other; let us do towards these people as we would have them to
have done towards us, if they had landed upon our shore, with the same
superiority of strength. And indeed, why should not things be equal on
both sides? How long has the right of the strongest been allowed to be
the balance of justice? What part of the gospel gives a sanction to such
a doctrine? In what part of the whole earth did the apostles and the
first promulgators of the gospel ever claim a right over the lives, the
freedom, or the substance of the Gentiles? What a strange method this is
of propagating the gospel, that holy law of grace, which, from being,
slaves to Satan, initiates us into the f