indeed be exacting too much to require that we should
offer ourselves unresisting victims to the ambitious
designs (forgive the expression) of your Government; and
what but self immolation would it be to abstain from the
only means by which we can hope to save these threatened
Provinces? Colonel D'Egville has just said that, with
the Indians opposed to us, Canada would fall. I go farther,
and aver that, without the aid of the Indians, circumstanced
as England now is, Canada must be lost to us. It is a
painful alternative I admit, for that a war, which is
not carried on with the conventional courtesies of
civilized belligerent nations, is little suited to our
taste, you will do us the justice to believe; but by whom
have we been forced into the dilemma? Had we been guilty
of rousing the Indian spirit against you, with a view to
selfish advantage; or had we in any may connived at the
destruction of your settlements, from either dread or
jealousy of your too close proximity, then should we have
deserved all the odium of such conduct. But this we
unequivocally deny. Had we even, presuming on the assistance
to be derived from them, been the first to engage the
Indians in this war, and sent them forth to lay waste
your possessions, we might have submitted to well merited
censure; but what is our real position? Without any fair
pretext, and simply in furtherance of its ambitious views,
the Government of the United States declares war against
England, and, with, an eagerness that sufficiently
discloses its true object, marches its rapidly organized
armies as rapidly to our weakly defended frontier. It is
scarcely a week since an express reached this post,