Benjamin Franklin [1710 
they are to this nation in power and numbers of 
people, are enemies to be still apprehended; and the 
Highlanders of Scotland have been so for many ages, 
by the greatest princes of Scotland and Britain. The 
wild Irish were able to give a great deal of disturb- 
ance even to Queen Elizabeth, and cost her more 
blood and treasure than her war with Spain. Can- 
ada, in the hands of France, has always stinted the 
growth of our colonies, in the course of this war, and 
indeed before it; has disturbed and vexed even the 
best and strongest of them; has found means to 
murder thousands of their people, and unsettle a 
great part of their country. Much more able will it 
be to starve the growth of an infant settlement. 
Canada has also found means to make this nation 
spend two or three millions a year in America; and 
a people, how small soever, that in their present 
situation can do this as often as we have a war with 
them, is, methinks, “an enemy to be apprehended.” 
Our North American colonies are to be considered 
as the frontier of the British empire on that side. The 
frontier of any dominion being attacked, it becomes 
not merely “the cause’’ of the people immediately 
attacked, the inhabitants of that frontier, but prop- 
erly “the cause’ of the whole body. Where the 
frontier people owe and pay obedience, there they 
have a right to look for protection. No political 
proposition is better established than this. It is 
therefore invidious to represent the “blood and 
treasure’’ spent in this war as spent in “the cause 
of the colonies’ only; and that they are “absurd 
and ungrateful,” if they think we have done nothing, 
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