Will the tendency to Indian hostilities be contested by any one?  Experience gives the answer.  The frontiers were scourged with war till the negotiation with Great Britain was far advanced, and then the state of hostility ceased.  Perhaps the public agents of both nations are innocent of fomenting the Indian war, and perhaps they are not.  We ought not, however, to expect that neighboring nations, highly irritated against each other, will neglect the friendship of the savages; the traders will gain an influence and will abuse it; and who is ignorant that their passions are easily raised, and hardly restrained from violence?  Their situation will oblige them to choose between this country and Great Britain, in case the treaty should be rejected.  They will not be our friends, and at the same time the friends of our enemies.

But am I reduced to the necesity of proving this point?  Certainly the very men who charged the Indian war on the detention of the posts, will call for no other proof than the recital of their own speeches.  It is remembered with what emphasis, with what acrimony, they expatiated on the burden of taxes, and the drain of blood and treasure into the Western country, in consequence of Britain’s holding the posts.  Until the posts are restored, they exclaimed, the treasury and the frontiers must bleed.

If any, against all these proofs, should maintain that the peace with the Indians will be stable without the posts, to them I urge another reply.  From arguments calculated to produce conviction, I will appeal directly to the hearts of those who hear me, and ask, whether it is not already planted there?  I resort especially to the convictions of the Western gentlemen, whether supposing no posts and no treaty, the settlers will remain in security?  Can they take it upon them to say, that an Indian peace, under these circumstances, will prove firm?  No, sir, it will not be peace, but a sword; it will be no better than a lure to draw victims within the reach of the tomahawk.

On this theme my emotions are unutterable.  If I could find words for them, if my powers bore any proportion to my zeal, I would swell my voice to such a note of remonstrance, it should reach every log-house beyond the mountains.  I would say to the inhabitants, wake from your false security; your cruel dangers, your more cruel apprehensions are soon to be renewed; the wounds, yet unhealed, are to be torn open again; in the daytime, your path through the woods will be ambushed; the darkness of midnight will glitter with the blaze of your dwellings.  You are a father—­the blood of your sons shall fatten your cornfield; you are a mother—­the war-whoop shall wake the sleep of the cradle.

On this subject you need not suspect any deception on your feelings.  It is a spectacle of horror, which cannot be overdrawn.  If you have nature in your hearts, it will speak a language, compared with which all I have said or can say will be poor and frigid.