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COLONIZATION

tage of Christian knowledge and principle, nor pretended to them. The English, on the contrary, came there as merchants; they were continually instructed by their masters at home not to commit military aggressions. They were bound by the laws of their country not to do it. They professed to be in possession of a far higher system of religion and morals than Hyder and his people had. They pretended to be the disciples of the Prince of Peace. Their magnanimous creed they declared to be, "To do to others as they would wish to be done by." But neither Hyder nor any other Indian ever saw the least evidence of any such superiority of morals, or of faith, in their conduct. They were as ambitious, and far more greedy of money than the heathen that they pretended to despise for their heathenism. They ought to have set a better example—but they did not. There never was a people that grasped more convulsively at dominion, or were less scrupulous in the means of obtaining it. They declared Hyder cruel and perfidious. He knew them to be both. This was the ground on which they stood. There were reasons why the English should avoid interfering with Hyder. There were none why he should avoid encroaching on them, for he did not profess any such grand principles of action as they did. If they were what they pretended to be, they ought to preach peace and union amongst the Indian princes: but union was of all things in the world the very one which they most dreaded; for they were not what they pretended to be; but sought on the divisions of the natives to establish their own power. Had Hyder attacked them in their own trading districts, there could have