Inexpressible are the efforts which
these same missionaries have employed to restrain, on such occasions,
this criminal ferocity, especially as the savages deemed themselves
authorized by right of reprisals. How many unfortunate persons of the
English nation would have been detained for ever captives, or undergone
the most cruel deaths, if, by the intervention of the missionaries, the
savages had not been prevailed on to release them?
They are even ready to prove, by their written instructions, the lessons
they inculcate to the savages, of the humanity and gentleness they ought
to practise, even in time of war. It is especially ever since about
seventeen years ago, that they do not cease declaiming against those
barbarous and sanguinary methods of proceeding that seem innate to them.
On this principle it is, that in the written maxims of conduct for them,
care has been taken to insert a chapter, which, from the beginning to
the end, places before their eyes the extreme horror they ought to have
of such enormities. Their children particularly are sedulously taught
this whole chapter, whence it comes, that one may daily perceive them
growing more humane, and more disposed to listen, on this head, to the
remonstrances of the missionaries.
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