1 Essays 
indefatigable industry of priests, similarity of super- 
stitions, 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 sup- 
plied 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 opportuni- 
ties, instigated by their priests (who have generally the chief manage- 
ment 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 com- 
mitted. 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 con- 
tinue their depredations, as they can by this means get more by hunt- 
ing 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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