The American dispute, between the French and us, is, therefore, only the quarrel of two robbers for the spoils of a passenger; but, as robbers have terms of confederacy, which they are obliged to observe, as members of the gang, so the English and French may have relative rights, and do injustice to each other, while both are injuring the Indians.  And such, indeed, is the present contest:  they have parted the northern continent of America between them, and are now disputing about their boundaries, and each is endeavouring the destruction of the other, by the help of the Indians, whose interest it is that both should be destroyed.

Both nations clamour, with great vehemence, about infractions of limits, violation of treaties, open usurpation, insidious artifices, and breach of faith.  The English rail at the perfidious French, and the French at the encroaching English:  they quote treaties on each side, charge each other with aspiring to universal monarchy, and complain, on either part, of the insecurity of possession near such turbulent neighbours.

Through this mist of controversy, it can raise no wonder, that the truth is not easily discovered.  When a quarrel has been long carried on between individuals, it is often very hard to tell by whom it was begun.  Every fact is darkened by distance, by interest, and by multitudes.  Information is not easily procured from far; those whom the truth will not favour, will not step, voluntarily, forth to tell it; and where there are many agents, it is easy for every single action to be concealed.

All these causes concur to the obscurity of the question:  By whom were hostilities in America commenced?  Perhaps there never can be remembered a time, in which hostilities had ceased.  Two powerful colonies, inflamed with immemorial rivalry, and placed out of the superintendence of the mother nations, were not likely to be long at rest.  Some opposition was always going forward, some mischief was every day done or meditated, and the borderers were always better pleased with what they could snatch from their neighbours, than what they had of their own.

In this disposition to reciprocal invasion, a cause of dispute never could be wanting.  The forests and deserts of America are without landmarks, and, therefore, cannot be particularly specified in stipulations; the appellations of those wide-extended regions have, in every mouth, a different meaning, and are understood, on either side, as inclination happens to contract or extend them.  Who has yet pretended to define, how much of America is included in Brazil, Mexico, or Peru?  It is almost as easy to divide the Atlantick ocean by a line, as clearly to ascertain the limits of those uncultivated, uninhabitable, unmeasured regions.