Page:Memoirs of a Huguenot Family.djvu/411

Rh has been recurred to, has been attended with many evils, one of which is draining out the remains of their specie.

Notwithstanding all this, our people pay their taxes with much more cheerfulness than could reasonably be expected from those whose necks were never heretofore accustomed to such a yoke, and who have had the mortification to see those contributions, large compared with their circumstances, surprisingly misapplied, and, through a complication of most egregious blunders, promotive of scarce one good effect to our country. Of these blunders, it may suffice to remark, that, notwithstanding the sums levied and expended, and the readiness of the people to pay their taxes and risk their persons in the defence of their country, and vindication of the insults offered to the crown, yet, ever since the tragical event last July, on the banks of the Monongahela, our frontiers have been ravaged and dispeopled, great quantities of the stock of the back inhabitants driven off by the French and their Indians to Duquesne. Fire, sword and perpetual alarms have surrounded them, persons of every age and sex have fallen a prey to the barbarians, and, in short, the most shocking outrages perpetrated on the western settlements of this colony, and our two next neighbors to the northward. By these means, our frontiers have been contracted in many places 150 miles, and still are drawing nearer and nearer to the centre.

To what secondary causes all this has been imputable, you will discover from a letter which the persuasion of some of my friends induced me to write to one of our honorables, early in the spring, of which I have sent my uncle Moses a copy; whence you will collect what methods we think most proper (and ours is the general opinion) for putting a stop to the further progress of those evils, and guarding against the like