1 Essays
indefatigable industry of priests, similarity of superstitions,
 and frequent family alliances. These are
easily, and have been continually, instigated to fall
upon and massacre our planters, even in times of
full peace between the two crowns, to the certain
diminution of our people and the contraction of our
settlements. And though it is known they are supplied
 by the French, and carry their prisoners to
them, we can, by complaining, obtain no redress, as
the governors of Canada have a ready excuse, that
I Dr. Clarke, in his Observations on the Late and Present Conduct of
the French, etc., printed at Boston, 1753, says:
“The Indians in the French interest are, upon all proper opportunities,
 instigated by their priests (who have generally the chief management
 of their public councils) to acts of hostility against the English,
even in time of profound peace between the two crowns. Of this
there are many undeniable instances. The war between the Indians
and the colonies of the Massachusetts Bay and New Hampshire, in
1733, by which those colonies suffered so much damage, was begun by
the instigation of the French; their supplies were from them; and
there are now original letters of several Jesuits to be produced, whereby
it evidently appears that they were continually animating the Indians,
when almost tired with the war, to a further prosecution of it. The
French not only excited the Indians, and supported them, but joined
their own forces with them in all the late hostilities that have been
committed within his Majesty’s province of Nova Scotia. And from
an intercepted letter this year from the Jesuits at Penobscot, and from
other information, it is certain that they have been using their utmost
endeavours to excite the Indians to new acts of hostility against his
Majesty’s colony of the Massachusetts Bay; and some have been committed.
 The French not only excite the Indians to acts of hostility,
but reward them for it, by buying the English prisoners of them, for the
ransom of each of which they afterwards demand of us the price that
is usually given for a slave in these colonies. They do this under the
specious pretence of rescuing the poor prisoners from the cruelties and
barbarities of the savages; but in reality to encourage them to continue
 their depredations, as they can by this means get more by hunting
 the English than by hunting wild beasts; and the French, at the
same time, are thereby enabled to keep up a large body of Indians,
entirely at the expense of the English.”

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