Page:Sketches of the life and character of Patrick Henry.djvu/264

240 to draw on the treasury for any sum of money not exceeding one thousand pounds, which shall stand charged to the account of money issued for the contingent charges of government."

A treaty with the Indians, however, was well known to be a miserable expedient; the benefit of which would scarcely last as long as the ceremonies that produced it. The reflecting politician could not help seeing that, in order to remove the annoyance effectually, the remedy must go to the root of the disease—that that inveterate, and fatal enmity which rankled in the hearts of the Indians, must be eradicated—that a common interest and congenial feelings between them and their white neighbours must be created—and humanity and civilization gradually superinduced upon the Indian character. The difficulty lay in devising a mode to effect these objects. The white people who inhabited the frontier, from the constant state of warfare in which they lived with the Indians, had imbibed much of their character; and learned to delight so highly in scenes of crafty, bloody, and desperate conflict, that they as often gave as they received the provocation to hostilities.

Hunting, which was their occupation, became dull and tiresome, unless diversified occasionally, by the more animated and piquant amusement of an Indian skirmish; just as "the blood more stirs, to rouse a lion than to start a hare." The policy therefore, which was to produce the deep and beneficial change that was meditated, must have respect to both sides, and be calculated to implant kind affections in bosoms, which at present were filled only with reciprocal and deadly hatred. The remedy suggested by Mr. Henry was to encourage marriages between these coterminous enemies; and having succeeded in the committee of the