The Works of Benjamin Franklin, Volume 4. Бенджамин Франклин
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John Penn.
By his Honor’s command,
Joseph Shippen, Jr., Secretary.
God save the King.”
These proclamations have as yet produced no discovery, the murderers having given out such threatenings against those that disapprove their proceedings, that the whole country seems to be in terror, and no one dare speak what he knows; even the letters from thence are unsigned in which any dislike is expressed of the rioters.
There are some (I am ashamed to hear it) who would extenuate the enormous wickedness of these actions by saying: “The inhabitants of the frontiers are exasperated with the murder of their relations by the enemy Indians in the present war.” It is possible; but though this might justify their going out into the woods to seek for those enemies and avenge upon them those murders, it can never justify their turning into the heart of the country to murder their friends.
If an Indian injures me, does it follow that I may revenge that injury on all Indians? It is well known that Indians are of different tribes, nations, and languages as well as the white people. In Europe, if the French, who are white people, should injure the Dutch, are they to revenge it on the English, because they too are white people? The only crime of these poor wretches seems to have been that they had a reddish-brown skin and black hair, and some people of that sort, it seems, had murdered some of our relations. If it be right to kill men for such a reason, then should any man with a freckled face and red hair kill a wife or child of mine, it would be right for me to revenge it by killing all the freckled, red-haired men, women, and children I could afterwards anywhere meet with.
But it seems these people think they have a better justification; nothing less than the Word of God. With the Scriptures in their hand and mouths they can set at nought that express demand, Thou shalt do no murder, and justify their wickedness by the command given Joshua to destroy the heathen. Horrid perversion of Scripture and of religion! To father the worst of crimes on the God of peace and love! Even the Jews, to whom that particular commission was directed, spared the Gibeonites on account of their faith once given. The faith of this government has been frequently given to those Indians; but that did not avail them with people who despise government.
We pretend to be Christians, and from the superior light we enjoy ought to exceed heathens, Turks, Saracens, Moors, Negroes, and Indians in the knowledge and practice of what is right. I will endeavour to show, by a few examples from books and history, the sense those people have had of such actions.
Homer wrote his poem, called the Odyssey, some hundred years before the birth of Christ. He frequently speaks of what he calls not only the duties, but the sacred rites of hospitality, exercised towards strangers while in our house or territory, as including, besides all the common circumstances of entertainment, full safety and protection of person from all danger of life, from all injuries, and even insults. The rites of hospitality were called sacred, because the stranger, the poor, and the weak, when they applied for protection and relief, were from the religion of those times supposed to be sent by the Deity to try the goodness of men, and that he would avenge the injuries they might receive where they ought to have been protected. These sentiments, therefore, influenced the manners of all ranks of people, even the meanest; for we find that when Ulysses came as a poor stranger to the hut of Eumæus, the swineherd, and his great dogs ran out to tear the ragged man, Eumæus drave them away with stones, and
“ ‘Unhappy stranger!’ (thus the faithful swain
Began, with accent gracious and humane)
‘What sorrow had been mine, if at my gate
Thy reverend age had met a shameful fate!
But enter this my lonely roof, and see
Our woods not void of hospitality.’
He said, and seconding the kind request,
With friendly step precedes the unknown guest,
A shaggy goat’s soft hide beneath him spread,
And with fresh rushes heaped an ample bed.
Joy touched the hero’s tender soul, to find
So just reception from a heart so kind;
And ‘O ye gods, with all your blessings grace’
(He thus broke forth) ‘this friend of human race!’
The swain replied: ‘It never was our guise
To slight the poor, or aught humane despise.
For Jove unfolds the hospitable door,
’T is Jove that sends the stranger and the poor.’ ”
These heathen people thought that after a breach of the rights of hospitality a curse from Heaven would attend them in every thing they did, and even their honest industry in their callings would fail of success. Thus when Ulysses tells Eumæus, who doubted the truth of what he related: “If I deceive you in this I should deserve death, and I consent that you should put me to death”; Eumæus rejects the proposal as what would be attended with both infamy and misfortune, saying ironically:
“Doubtless, O guest, great laud and praise were mine,
If, after social rites and gifts bestowed,
I stained my hospitable hearth with blood.
How would the gods my righteous toils succeed,
And bless the hand that made a stranger bleed?
No more.”
Even an open enemy, in the heat of battle, throwing down his arms, submitting to his foe, and asking life and protection, was supposed to acquire an immediate right to that protection. Thus one describes his being saved when his party was defeated:
“We turned to flight; the gathering vengeance spread
On all parts round, and heaps on heaps lie dead.
The radiant helmet from my brows unlaced,
And lo, on earth my shield and javelin cast,
I meet the monarch with a suppliant’s face,
Approach his chariot, and his knees embrace.
He heard, he saved, he placed me at his side;
My state he pitied, and my tears he dried;
Restrained the rage the vengeful foe expressed,
And turned the deadly weapons from my breast.
Pious to guard the hospitable rite,
And fearing Jove, whom mercy’s works delight.”
The suitors of Penelope are, by the same ancient poet, described as a set of lawless men, who were regardless of the sacred rights of hospitality. And, therefore, when the Queen was informed they were slain, and that by Ulysses, she, not believing that Ulysses was returned, says:
“Ah no! some god the suitors’ deaths decreed,
Some god descends, and by his hand they bleed;
Blind, to contemn the stranger’s righteous cause,
And violate all hospitable laws!
. . . The powers they defied;
But Heaven is just, and by a god they died.”
Thus much for the sentiments of the ancient heathens. As for the Turks, it is recorded in the Life of Mahomet, the founder of their religion, that Khaled, one of his captains, having divided a number of prisoners between himself and those that were with him, he commanded the hands of his own prisoners to be tied behind them, and then, in a most cruel and brutal manner, put them to the sword;