and beetle flies, yet had more effect than all the elaborate epistles, protests and proclamations of his learned predecessor, put together. In consequence of his urgent propositions, the sage council of the amphyctions agreed to enter into a final adjustment of grievances and settlement of boundaries, to the end that a perpetual and happy peace might take place between the two powers. For this purpose governor Stuyvesant deputed two ambassadors, to negotiate with commissioners from the grand council of the league, and a treaty was solemnly concluded at Hartford. On receiving intelligence of this event, the whole community was in an uproar of exultation. The trumpet of the sturdy Van Corlear, sounded all day with joyful clangour from the ramparts of Fort Amsterdam, and at night the city was magnificently illuminated with two hundred and fifty tallow candles; besides a barrel of tar, which was burnt before the governor's house, on the cheering aspect of public affairs. And now my worthy, but simple reader, is doubtless, like the great and good Peter, congratulating himself with the idea, that his feelings will no longer be molested by afflicting details of stolen horses, broken heads, impounded hogs, and all the other catalogue of heart-rending cruelties, that disgraced these border wars. But if my reader should indulge in such expectations, it is only another proof, among the many he has already given in the course of this work, of his utter ignorance of state affairsand this lamentable ignorance on his part, obliges me to enter into a very profound dissertation, to which I call his attention in the next chapterwherein I will shew that Peter Stuyvesant has already committed a great error in politics; and by effecting a peace, has materially jeopardized the tranquility of the province. CHAP. III. Containing divers philosophical speculations on war and negociations—and shewing that a treaty of peace is a great national evil. It was the opinion of that poetical philosopher Lucretius, that war was the original state of man; whom he described as being primitively a savage beast of prey, engaged in a constant state of hostility with his own species, and that this ferocious spirit was tamed and ameliorated by society. The same opinion has been advocated by the learned Hobbes, nor have there been wanting a host of sage philosophers to admit and defend it. For my part, I am prodigiously fond of these valuable speculations so complimentary to human nature, and which are so ingeniously calculated to make beasts of both writer and reader; but in this instance I am inclined to take the proposition by halves, believing with old Horace, that though war may have been originally the favourite amusement and industrious employment of our progenitors, yet like many other excellent habits, so far Quum prorepserunt primis animalia terris, Mutum ac turpe pecus, glandem atque cubilia propter, Hor. Sat. L. i. S 3. from being ameliorated, it has been cultivated and confirmed by refinement and civilization, and encreases in exact proportion as we approach towards that state of perfection, which is the ne plus ultra of modern philosophy. The first conflict between man and man was the mere exertion of physical force, unaided by auxiliary weapons-his arm was his buckler, his fist was his mace, and a broken head the catastrophe of his encounters. The battle of unassisted strength, was succeeded by the more rugged one of stones and clubs, and war assumed a sanguinary aspect. As man advanced in refinement, as his faculties expanded, and his sensibilities became more exquisite, he grew rapidly more ingenious and experienced, in the art of murdering his fellow beings. He invented a thousand devices to defend and to assault the helmet, the cuirass and the buckler; the sword, the dart and the javelin, prepared him to elude the wound, as well as to launch the blow. Still urging on, in the brilliant and philanthropic career of invention, he enlarges and heightens his powers of defence and injury-The Aries, the Scorpio, the Balista and the Catapulta, give a horror and sublimity to war, and magnify its glory, by encreasing its desolation. Still insatiable; though armed with machinery that seemed to reach the limits of destructive invention, and to yield a power of injury, commensurate, even to the desires of revenge-still deeper researches must be made in With furious zeal he dives the diabolical arcana. into the bowels of the earth; he toils midst poisonous minerals and deadly salts--the sublime discovery of gunpowder, blazes upon the world --and finally the dreadful art of fighting by proclamation, seems to endow the demon of war, with ubiquity and omnipotence ! By the hand of my body but this is grand!--this indeed marks the powers of mind, and bespeaks that divine endowment of reason, which distinguishes us from the animals, our inferiors. The unenlightened brutes content themselves with the native force which providence has assigned them. The angry bull butts with his horns, as did his progenitors ber fore him--the lion, the leopard, and the tyger, seek only with their talons and their fangs, to gratify their sanguinary fury; and even the subtle serpent darts the same venom, and uses the same wiles, as did his sire before the flood. Man alone, blessed with the inventive mind, goes on from discovery to discovery-enlarges and multiplies his powers of destruction; arrogates the tremendous weapons of deity itself, and tasks creation to assist him, in murdering his brother worm! In proportion as the art of war has increased in improvement, has the art of preserving peace advanced in equal ratio. But as I have already been very prolix to but little purpose, in the first part of |