I believe it will be allowed, that the Quaker instances, mentioned in the last section, are in point.  But I am aware also, it will be said that, though different cabinets, all having the same Christian disposition, would settle their disputes in a friendly manner, how would a cabinet, consisting of spiritually minded men, settle with a cabinet of other men, who had not brought their passions under due regulation, and who, besides, had no notion of the unlawfulness of war.

I apprehend that it will not be denied, that men, as ferocious as any recorded in history, were those, who were found in America, when that continent was discovered.  We hear nothing of Africans, or of Asiatics, which would induce us to suppose, that they were as wild and as barbarous as these.  And nothing is more true of these, than they, were frequently concerned in wars.  I shall therefore take these for an example, and I shall shew by the opposite conduct of two different communities towards them, that it rests with men to live peaceably or not, as they cultivate the disposition to do it, or as they follow the policy of the Gospel in preference of the policy of the world.

When the English, Dutch, and others, began to people America, they purchased land of the natives.  But when they went to that continent, notwithstanding there were amiable persons among them, and friends to civil and religious liberty, they went with the notions of worldly policy, and they did not take with them the Christian wisdom of the unlawfulness of war.  They acted on the system of preparation, because there might be danger.  They never settled without palisadoes and a fort.  They kept their nightly watches, though unmolested.  They were, in short, in the midst of war, though no injury had been offered them by the natives, and though professedly in the midst of peace.

In the peopling of Connecticut, for I must begin with some one state, it was ordered at an English court,[16] “holden at Dorchester, on the seventh day of June, 1736, that every town should keep a watch, and be well supplied with ammunition.  The constables were directed to warn the watches in their turns, and to make it their care, that they should be kept according to the direction of the court.  They were required also to take care that the inhabitants were well furnished with arms and ammunition, and kept in a constant state of defence.”  As these infant settlements, the author observes, “were filled and surrounded with numerous savages, the people conceived themselves in danger, when they lay down, and when they rose up, when they went out, and when they came in.  Their circumstances were such, that it was judged necessary for every man to be a soldier.”

[Footnote 16:  Trumbull’s History of Connecticut, p. 56.]