perfidy and injustice, like the Hottentot depredations, are but symptoms of
an animosity, and the language of a hostile disposition, already conceived.
The charge of cowardice and pusillanimity, qualities which the interested
and cautious enemy should, of all others, like best to find in his rival,
is urged with aversion, and made the ground of dislike. Hear the peasants
on different sides of the Alps, and the Pyrenees, the Rhine, or the British
channel, give vent to their prejudices, and national passions; it is among
them that we find the materials of war and dissention laid without the
direction of government, and sparks ready to kindle into a flame, which the
statesman is frequently disposed to extinguish. The fire will not always
catch where his reasons of state would direct, nor stop where the
concurrence of interest has produced an alliance. "My father," said a
Spanish peasant, "would rise from his grave, if he could foresee a war with
France." What interest had he, or the bones of his father, in the quarrels
of princes?

These observations seem to arraign our species, and to give an unfavourable
picture of mankind; and yet the particulars we have mentioned are
consistent with the most amiable qualities of our nature, and often furnish
a scene North America, who have no herds to preserve, nor settlements to
defend, are yet engaged in almost perpetual wars, for which they can assign
no reason, but the point of honour, and a desire to continue the struggle
their fathers maintained. They do not regard the spoils of an enemy; and
the warrior who has seized any booty, easily parts with it to the first
person who comes in his way. [Footnote: See Charlevoix's History of
Canada.]

But we need not cross the Atlantic to find proofs of animosity, and to
observe, in the collision of separate societies, the influence of angry
passions, that do not arise from an opposition of interest. Human nature