Page:History of the University of Pennsylvania - Montgomery (1900).djvu/438

434 and unanimously in support of the laws, and in strengthening the hands of government, that justice may be done, the wicked punished, and the innocent protected; otherwise we can, as a people, expect no blessing from Heaven; there will be no security for our persons or properties; anarchy and confusion will prevail over all; and violence without judgment dispose of everything. * * * I shall conclude with observing, that cowards can handle arms, can strike where they are sure to meet with no return, can wound, mangle and murder; but it belongs to brave men to spare and protect; for, as the poet says,

' Mercy still sways the brave. '

But neither the fulminations of the authorities, nor the eloquence of the foremost citizen of the province had weight with these savages of a whiter hue. Their thirst for Indian bloodied them to search for wider streams wherein to quench it. Many friendly Indians in the province, to the number of one hundred and forty, some of them Christians under Moravian teachings, at once sought protection among their Philadelphia friends, where they found a place of refuge on Providence Island in the Delaware. The Paxton Boys marched towards Philadelphia in swelling numbers. The Indians were now brought into the city and secured in the barracks. Franklin, at the request of the Governor, organized a military association as he had done before under the fears of foreign invasion, and nine companies were formed. The Paxton boys had marched as far as Germantown, where they paused, hearing of the Indians' protection and the preparations for their armed defence: happily, a fatal pause to their schemes. Governor Penn deputed Franklin with other citizens to go out and meet them, among these being his fellow Trustees Dr. Peters, Thomas Willing and Benjamin Chew. But an influential element in the province exhibited some sympathy with the cry of " Down with the Indians," and beyond the quiet dispersion of these marauders, unharmed by the law, nothing was accomplished; and the month of February witnessed the cessation of the excitement and the assured safety of the Indians. Their enemies alleged that the friendship of these Indians was deceitful, that they gave encouragement to traitors, even if they did not harbor them; that retaliation was justifiable; and their war was against them as a nation, of which every tribe and indi-