When we see men acting thus against the precepts of reason, and the
instincts of nature, we cannot hesitate to determine, that, by some
means or other, they were debarred from choice; that they were lured or
frighted into compliance; that they either granted only what they found
impossible to keep, or expected advantages upon the faith of their new
inmates, which there was no purpose to confer upon them. It cannot be
said, that the Indians originally invited us to their coasts; we went,
uncalled and unexpected, to nations who had no imagination that the
earth contained any inhabitants, so distant and so different from
themselves. We astonished them with our ships, with our arms, and with
our general superiority. They yielded to us, as to beings of another and
higher race, sent among them from some unknown regions, with power which
naked Indians could not resist and, which they were, therefore, by every
act of humility, to propitiate, that they, who could so easily destroy,
might be induced to spare.

To this influence, and to this only, are to be attributed all the
cessions and submissions of the Indian princes, if, indeed, any such
cessions were ever made, of which we have no witness, but those who
claim from them; and there is no great malignity in suspecting, that
those who have robbed have also lied.

Some colonies, indeed, have been established more peaceably than others.
The utmost extremity of wrong has not always been practised; but those
that have settled in the new world, on the fairest terms, have no other
merit than that of a scrivener, who ruins in silence, over a plunderer
that seizes by force; all have taken what had other owners, and all have
had recourse to arms, rather than quit the prey on which they had
fastened.