P. That is no proof of the contrary, friend Charles.  Thy subjects were the aggressors.  When thy subjects first went to North America, they found these poor people the fondest and kindest creatures in the world.  Every day they would watch for them to come ashore, and hasten to meet them, and feast them on the best fish, and venison, and corn, which were all they had.  In return for this hospitality of the savages, as we call them, thy subjects, termed Christians, seized on their country and rich hunting grounds for farms for themselves.  Now, is it to be wondered at, that these much-injured people should have been driven to desperation by such injustice; and that, burning with revenge, they should have committed some excesses?

K C. Well, then, I hope you will not complain when they come to treat you in the same manner.

P. I am not afraid of it.

K.C.  Ah! how will you avoid it?  You mean to get their hunting grounds, too, I suppose?

P. Yes, but not by driving these poor people away from them.

K.C.  No, indeed?  How then will you get their lands?

P. I mean to buy their lands of them.

K.C.  Buy their lands of them?  Why, man, you have already bought them of me!

P. Yes, I know I have, and at a dear rate, too; but I did it only to get thy good will, not that I thought thou hadst any right to their lands.

K.C.  How, man? no right to their lands?

P. No, friend Charles, no right; no right at all:  what right hast thou to their lands?

K.C.  Why, the right of discovery, to be sure; the right which the Pope and all Christian kings have agreed to give one another.

P. The right of discovery?  A strange kind of right, indeed.  Now suppose, friend Charles, that some canoe load of these Indians, crossing the sea, and discovering this island of Great Britain, were to claim it as their own, and set it up for sale over thy head, what wouldst thou think of it?

K.C.  Why—­why—­why—­I must confess, I should think it a piece of great impudence in them.

P. Well, then, how canst thou, a Christian, and a Christian prince, too, do that which thou so utterly condemnest in these people whom thou callest savages?  And suppose, again, that these Indians, on thy refusal to give up thy island of Great Britain, were to make war on thee, and, having weapons more destructive than thine, were to destroy many of thy subjects, and drive the rest away—­wouldst thou not think it horribly cruel?

K. C. I must say, friend William, that I should; how can I say otherwise?

P. Well, then, how can I, who call myself a Christian, do what I should abhor even in the heathen?  No.  I will not do it.  But I will buy the right of the proper owners, even of the Indians themselves.  By doing this, I shall imitate God himself in his justice and mercy, and thereby insure his blessing on my colony, if I should ever live to plant one in North America. 
                                                          —­Mason L. Weems.