University of Virginia Library

7440. RETALLATION, On Savages.—

To do wrong is a melancholy resource, even
where retaliation renders it indispensably necessary.
It is better to suffer much from the
scalpings, the conflagrations, the rapes and rapine
of savages, than to countenance and
strengthen such barbarisms by retortion. I
have ever deemed it more honorable and more
profitable, too, to set a good example than to
follow a bad one.—
To M. Correa. Washington ed. vi, 405.
(M. 1814)