Cortez.—­I am afraid there was a little fraud in the purchase.  Thy followers, William Penn, are said to think cheating in a quiet and sober way no mortal sin.

Penn.—­The saints are always calumniated by the ungodly.  But it was a sight which an angel might contemplate with delight to behold the colony I settled!  To see us living with the Indians like innocent lambs, and taming the ferocity of their barbarous manners by the gentleness of ours!  To see the whole country, which before was an uncultivated wilderness, rendered as fertile and fair as the garden of God!  O Fernando Cortez, Fernando Cortez! didst thou leave the great empire of Mexico in that state?  No, thou hadst turned those delightful and populous regions into a desert—­a desert flooded with blood.  Dost thou not remember that most infernal scene when the noble Emperor Guatimozin was stretched out by thy soldiers upon hot burning coals to make him discover into what part of the lake of Mexico he had thrown the royal treasures?  Are not his groans ever sounding in the ears of thy conscience?  Do not they rend thy hard heart, and strike thee with more horror than the yells of the furies?

Cortez.—­Alas!  I was not present when that dire act was done.  Had I been there I would have forbidden it.  My nature was mild.

Penn.—­Thou wast the captain of that band of robbers who did this horrid deed.  The advantage they had drawn from thy counsels and conduct enabled them to commit it; and thy skill saved them afterwards from the vengeance that was due to so enormous a crime.  The enraged Mexicans would have properly punished them for it, if they had not had thee for their general, thou lieutenant of Satan.

Cortez.—­The saints I find can rail, William Penn.  But how do you hope to preserve this admirable colony which you have settled?  Your people, you tell me, live like innocent lambs.  Are there no wolves in North America to devour those lambs?  But if the Americans should continue in perpetual peace with all your successors there, the French will not.  Are the inhabitants of Pennsylvania to make war against them with prayers and preaching?  If so, that garden of God which you say you have planted will undoubtedly be their prey, and they will take from you your property, your laws, and your religion.

Penn.—­The Lord’s will be done.  The Lord will defend us against the rage of our enemies if it be His good pleasure.

Cortez.—­Is this the wisdom of a great legislator?  I have heard some of your countrymen compare you to Solon.  Did Solon, think you, give laws to a people, and leave those laws and that people at the mercy of every invader?  The first business of legislature is to provide a military strength that may defend the whole system.  If a house is built in a land of robbers, without a gate to shut or a bolt or bar to secure it, what avails it how well-proportioned or how commodious the architecture