Benjamin Franklin [1760 
straining their restless subjects in America from 
encroaching on our limits and disturbing our trade; 
and the difficulty on our part of preventing encroach- 
ments that may possibly exist many years without 
coming to our knowledge. 
But the Remarker “does not see why the argu- 
ments employed concerning a security for a peace- 
able behaviour in Canada would not be equally 
cogent for calling for the same security in Europe.” * 
On a little farther reflection, he must, I think, be 
sensible that the circumstances of the two cases are 
widely different. Here we are separated by the best 
and clearest of boundaries, the ocean, and we have 
people in or near every part of our territory. Any 
attempt to encroach upon us by building a fort, 
even in the obscurest corner of these Islands, must 
therefore be known and prevented immediately. The 
aggressors also must be known, and the nation they 
belong to would be accountable for their aggression. 
In America it is quite otherwise. A vast wilder- 
ness, thinly or scarce at all peopled, conceals with 
ease the march of troops and workmen. Important 
passes may be seized within our limits, and forts 
built in a month, at a small expense, that may cost 
us an age and a million to remove. Dear experience 
has taught this. But what is still worse, the wide- 
extended forests between our settlements and 
theirs are inhabited by barbarous tribes of savages 
that delight in war, and take pride in murder; sub- 
jects properly neither of the French nor English, 
but strongly attached to the former by the art and 
I Remarks, p. 28. 
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