Some
new advantage they, undoubtedly, saw, or imagined themselves to see, and
what more was necessary to the establishment of the colony, was supplied
by natural inclination to experiments, and that impatience of doing
nothing, to which mankind, perhaps, owe much of what is imagined to be
effected by more splendid motives.
In this region of desolate sterility they settled themselves, upon
whatever principle; and, as they have, from that time, had the happiness
of a government, by which no interest has been neglected, nor any part
of their subjects overlooked, they have, by continual encouragement and
assistance from France, been perpetually enlarging their bounds, and
increasing their numbers.
These were, at first, like other nations who invaded America, inclined
to consider the neighbourhood of the natives, as troublesome and
dangerous, and are charged with having destroyed great numbers; but they
are now grown wiser, if not honester, and, instead of endeavouring to
frighten the Indians away, they invite them to inter-marriage and
cohabitation, and allure them, by all practicable methods, to become the
subjects of the king of France.
If the Spaniards, when they first took possession of the newly
discovered world, instead of destroying the inhabitants by thousands,
had either had the urbanity or the policy to have conciliated them by
kind treatment, and to have united them, gradually, to their own people,
such an accession might have been made to the power of the king of
Spain, as would have made him far the greatest monarch that ever yet
ruled in the globe; but the opportunity was lost by foolishness and
cruelty, and now can never be recovered.
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