A Serious Address (Fourth Edition) - 2
My Brethren and Countrymen,
MADNESS in any Society of People is generally a Forerunner of their Destruction. For before the Almighty destroys a Nation or People, he permits them first to be so infatuated as to run into Extravagancies, which by natural Consequences, bring Destruction upon them.
The Massacre of the Indians at Lancaster, and the too general Approbation it has met with, are Evidences of very great Madness; And that Calamities, by Occasion thereof, are impending over us, will appear from the following Considerations, viz.
To put any Man to Death (tho’ in open War) when he may be made a Prisoner, is contrary to the Laws of Nations.
Under the Mosaic Dispensation, we find the Jews, who were under the immediate Direction of GOD himself, observing and performing their Treaties with great Punctuality.----- Thus the Gibeonites were spared, because of the Publick Faith of the Israelites plighted to them, tho’ the same was obtained by Fraud and Falsehood. And we find the good old Patriarch Jacob, by divine Inspiration, on his Death-Bed, bitterly cursing two of his Sons, because of the Murder of Schechem and his Family, in cool Blood, after Peace had been concluded; tho’ before he had committed a Crime worthy of Death.
It is a fundamental Law of all civil Governments, that no Person shall put another to death by his own Authority, let him have committed what Crime he may, if he can, with Safety be apprehended, so as to be brought to Tryal by the Laws of the Community.
To Make War on one Nation for the Offences of another Nation; or to slay one Man for the Crime of another, seems contrary to natural Justice; but to butcher Infants at the Breast, incapable of distinguishing between Right and Wrong, for the Crimes of their Parents, or of the Nation to which they belong, or perhaps only for the Crimes of other Nations of the same Colour, is shocking to every Person who has the common Feelings of Humanity. The visiting the Iniquities of the