OF LANCASTER COUNTY, 193 



tiality to as tlie Frontier Counties can be of prejudices against Indians; 

 and this, too, in favour of Indians only, against His Majesty's faithful 

 and loyal Subjects. Besides, it is well known that the design of it is to 

 comprehend a Fact committed before such a Law was thought of. And 

 if such practices were tolerated, no man could be secure in his most 

 valuable Interest. We are also informed, to our great Surprize, that 

 this Bill has actually received the assent of a Majority of the House, 

 which we are persuaded could not have been the case, had our Frontier 

 Counties been equally represented in Assembly. However, we hope 

 that the Legislature of this Province will never enact a Law of so dan- 

 gerous a tendency, or take away from his Majesty's good Subjects a 

 privilege so long esteemed sacred by Englishmen. 



" Thirdly. During the late and present Indian War, the Frontiers of 

 this Province have been repeatedly attacked and ravaged by Skulking 

 parties of the Indians, who have with the most Savage Cruelty murdered 

 Men, Women and Children, without distinction, and have reduced near 

 a thousand Families to the most extreme distress. It grieves us to the 

 very heart to see such of our Frontier Inhabitants as have escaped 

 Savage Fury with the loss of their Parents, their Children, their Wives 

 or Relatives, left destitute by the public, and exposed to the most cruel 

 Poverty and Wretchedness, while upwards of an Hundred and twenty of 

 these Savages, who are with great reason suspected of being guilty of 

 these horrid Barbarities, under the Mask of Friendship, have procured 

 themselves to be taken under the protection of the Government, with a 

 view to elude the Fury of the brave Relatives of the murdered, and are 

 now maintained at the public Expence. Some of these Indians now in 

 the Barracks of Philadelphia, are confessedly a part of the Wyalousing 

 Indians, which Tribe is now at War with us, and the others are the 

 Moravian Indians, who, living with us under the Cloak of Friendship, 

 carried on a Correspondence with our known Enemies on the Great Is- 

 land. We cannot but observe, with sorrow and indignation, that some 

 Persons in this Province are at pains to extenuate the barbarous Cru- 

 elties practised by these Savages on our murdered Brethren and Rela- 

 tives, which are shocking to human Nature, and must pierce every 

 Heart, but that of the hardened perpetrators or their Abettors; Nor is 

 it less distressing to hear others pleading that, although the Wyalousing 

 Tribe is at War with us, yet that part of it which is under the Protec- 

 tion of the Government, may be friendly to the English, and innocent. 

 In what nation under the Sun was it ever the custom that when a neigh- 

 boring Nation took up Arms, not an individual should be touched but 

 only the Persons that offered Hostilities ? Who ever proclaimed War 

 with a part of a Nation, and not with the Whole ? Had these Indians 

 disapproved of the Perfidy of their Tribe, and been willing to cultivate 

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