116 THE PAXTON MEN. 1763. 



trained under all the influences of the warlike 

 frontier. They fiercely complained that they were 

 interposed as a barrier between the rest of the 

 province and a ferocious enemy ; and that they were 

 sacrificed to the safety of men who looked with 

 indifference on their miseries, and lost no oppor- 

 tunity to extenuate and smooth away the cruelties 

 of their destroyers.^ They declared that the 

 Quakers would go farther to befriend a murder- 

 ine: Delaware than to succor a fellow-countryman ; 

 that they loved red blood better than white, and a 

 pagan better than a Presbyterian. The Pennsyl- 

 vania borderers were, as we have seen, chiefly 

 the descendants of Presbyterian emigrants from the 

 north of Ireland. They had inherited some por- 

 tion of their forefathers' sectarian zeal, which, 

 while it did nothing to soften the barbarity of their 

 manners, served to inflame their animosity against 

 the Quakers, and added bitterness to their just 

 complaints. It supplied, moreover, a convenient 

 sanction for the indulgence of their hatred and 

 vengeance ; for, in the general turmoil of theh pas- 

 sions, fanaticism too was awakened, and they inter- 

 preted the command that Joshua should destroy 



1 Extract from the Declaration of Lazarus Steiaart : — 

 " Did we not brave the summer's heat and the winter's cold, and the 

 savage tomahawk, wliile the Inhabitants of Philadelphia, Philadelphia 

 county, Bucks, and Chester, ' ate, drank, and were merry ' 1 



" If a white man kill an Indian, it is a murder far exceeding any crime 

 upon record ; he must not be tried in the county where he lives, or where 

 the offence was committed, but in Philadelphia, that he may be tried, 

 convicted, sentenced and hung without delay. If an Indian kill a white 

 man, it was the act of an ignorant Heathen, perhaps in liquor ; alas, poor 

 innocent ! he is sent to the friendly Indians that he may be made a Chris- 

 tian." 



