Benjamin Franklin +760 
barbarities they perpetrate with Indians on our col- 
onists are agreeable to us; and that they need not 
apprehend the resentment of a government with 
whose views they so happily concur? Will not the 
colonies view it in this light? Will they have reason 
to consider themselves any longer as subjects and 
children, when they find their cruel enemies hallooed 
upon them by the country from whence they sprung; 
the government that owes them protection, as it 
requires their obedience? Is not this the most likely 
means of driving them into the arms of the French, 
who can invite them by an offer of security their 
own government chooses not to afford them? I 
would not be thought to insinuate that the Remarker 
wants humanity. I know how little many good- 
natured persons are affected by the distresses of 
people at a distance, and whom they do not know. 
There are even those who, being present, can sym- 
pathize sincerely with the grief of a lady on the sud- 
den death of a favorite bird, and yet can read of the 
sinking of a city in Syria with very little concern. 
If it be, after all, thought necessary to check the 
growth of our colonies, give me leave to propose a 
method less cruel. It is a method of which we have 
an example in Scripture. The murder of husbands, 
of wives, of brothers, sisters, and children, whose 
pleasing society has been for some time enjoyed, 
affects deeply the respective surviving relations; but 
grief for the death of a child just born is short and 
easily supported. The method I mean is that which 
was dictated by the Egyptian policy, when the 
“infinite increase’’ of the children of Israel was 
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