nations.  The most bitter enmity animates the bosoms of all against the Government and people of the United States, from whom, according to their own showing, they have to record injury upon injury; whereas from us they have received but benefits.  I repeat, this is at once politic and just.  What could Canada have hoped to accomplish in the approaching struggle, had the conduct of the American Government been such as to have neutralized the interest we had excited in, and for ourselves?  She must have succumbed; and my firm impression is, that, at whatever epoch of her existence the United States may extend the hand of conquest over these provinces, with the Indian tribes that are now leagued with us crowding to her own standard, not all the armies England may choose to send to their defence will be able to prevent it.”

“Filling the situation you now occupy, Colonel, there can be no doubt you are in every way enabled to arrive at a full knowledge of Indian feelings and Indian interests; and we have but too much reason to fear that the strong hatred to the United States, you describe as existing on the part of their several leaders, has had a tendency to unite them more cordially to the British cause.  But your course of observation suggests to another question.  Why is it that, with the knowledge possessed by the British Government of the cruel nature of Indian warfare, it can consent to enlist them as allies?  To prevent their taking up arms against the Canadas may be well, but in my opinion (and it is one very generally entertained through the United States,) the influence of the British authorities should have been confined to neutralizing their services.”

“Nay, Major Montgomerie,” observed the General, “it would indeed be exacting too much to require that we should offer ourselves unresisting victims to the ambitious designs (forgive the expression) of your Government; and what but self immolation would it be to abstain from the only means by which we can hope to save these threatened Provinces?  Colonel D’Egville has just said that, with the Indians opposed to us, Canada would fall.  I go farther, and aver that, without the aid of the Indians, circumstanced as England now is, Canada must be lost to us.  It is a painful alternative I admit, for that a war, which is not carried on with the conventional courtesies of civilized belligerent nations, is little suited to our taste, you will do us the justice to believe; but by whom have we been forced into the dilemma?  Had we been guilty of rousing the Indian spirit against you, with a view to selfish advantage; or had we in any may connived at the destruction of your settlements, from either dread or jealousy of your too close proximity, then should we have deserved all the odium of such conduct.  But this we unequivocally deny.  Had we even, presuming on the assistance to be derived from them, been the first to engage the Indians in this war, and sent them forth to lay waste your possessions,