St. Clair and Wayne 29 



and the Americans loudly protested that their con- 

 duct was due to sheer hatred of the young Republic. 

 The explanation was simpler. The British had no 

 far-reaching design to prevent the spread and growth 

 of the English-speaking people on the American con- 

 tinent. They cared nothing, one way or the other, 

 for that spread and growth, and it is unlikely that 

 they wasted a moment's thought on the ultimate 

 future of the race. All that they desired was to 

 preserve the very valuable fur-trade of the region 

 round the Great Lakes for their own benefit. They 

 were acting from the motives of self-interest that 

 usually control nations; and it never entered their 

 heads to balance against these immediate interests 

 the future of a nation many of whose members were 

 to them mere foreigners. 



The majority of the Americans, on their side, were 

 exceedingly loth to enter into aggressive war with 

 the Indians; but were reluctantly forced into the 

 contest by the necessity of supporting the back- 

 woodsmen. The frontier was pushed westward, 

 not because the leading statesmen of America, or 

 the bulk of the American people, foresaw the con- 

 tinental greatness of this country or strove for such 

 greatness; but because the bordermen of the West, 

 and the adventurous land-speculators of the East, 

 were personally interested in acquiring new terri- 

 tory, and because, against their will, the govern- 

 mental representatives of the nation were finally 

 forced to make the interests of the Westerners their 

 own. The people of the seaboard, the leaders of 



