Digital Paxton: Digital Collection, Critical Edition, and Teaching Platform

The Conduct of the Paxton Men Impartially Represented - 30

for want of Medicine or Relief from a Surgeon or Physician, to linger out a miserable Life, and perish at last under the Wounds received perhaps from these very Villains?--------My Soul rifles with Indignation at the Thought!---This is a Consideration that must give Bitterness to every humane Spirit, though it should suffer no other Way than by Sympathy! What good Man is there, whose Heart does not bleed, when he sees a Set of Men amongst us embracing BARBARIANS, with more Tenderness and Hospitality than ever they shew’d to their distressed Countrymen and Fellow-subjects?---When he hears them express more Sorrow and Compassion for the Death of a few Savage Traytors, than they ever expressed for the Calamities of their Country, and the Murders of their Fellow-Christians?---When he sees them take up Arms to protect these cruel Monsters, which they would never do to protect their own Neighbours and the King’s Subjects from the most inhumane Butcheries?-------When a Waggon-Load of the scalped and mangled Bodies of their Countrymen were brought to Philadelphia and laid at the State-House Door, and another Waggon-Load brought into the Town of Lancaster, did they rouse to Arms to avenge the Cause of their murder’d Friends?---Did we hear any of those Lamentations that are now so plentifully poured forth for the Conestogoe Indians?------O my dear Friends! must I answer---No? The Dutch and Irish are murder’d without Pity.

I am no Stranger to your Fellow-feeling and Humanity:---I well know that you have a Tear for Distress, and a Sigh for Misery--------And if it were not criminal, I should envy you your happy Lot, in being placed by Providence at some Distance from the Scenes of Destruction and Desolation, of which, I and my Neighbours have been melancholy Eye-Witnesses----------To use the Words of the Poet;

----------------If we could recount
Our baleful News, and at each Word’s Deliverance
Stab Poinards in our Flesh, till all were told,
The Words would add more Anguish than the Wounds
SHAKESPEAR.

The Miseries of the back Inhabitants are really beyond the Power of Description---Nor are the dreadful Barbarities committed upon such of our unhappy Brethren as fell into

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