f both sides of the Connecticut river.

When the news of this treaty arrived at New Amsterdam, the whole city was
in an uproar of exultation. The old women rejoiced that there was to be no
war, the old men that their cabbage-gardens were safe from invasion; while
the political sages pronounced the treaty a great triumph over the
Yankees, considering how much they had claimed, and how little they had
been "fobbed off with."

And now my worthy reader is, doubtless, like the great and good Peter,
congratulating himself with the idea that his feelings will no longer be
harassed 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 he should indulge in such
expectations, it is a proof that he is but little versed in the
paradoxical ways of cabinets; to convince him of which I solicit his
serious attention to my next chapter, wherein I will show that Peter
Stuyvesant has already committed a great error in politics, and, by
effecting a peace, has materially hazarded the tranquillity of the
province.

FOOTNOTES:

[40] Haz. Coll. Stat. Pap.

CHAPTER IV.

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 Hobbes;[41] nor have there
been wanting many other philosophers to admit and defend it.

For my part, though prodigiously fond of these valuable speculations, so
complimentary to human nature, yet, in this instance, I am inclined to
take the proposition by halves, believing with Horace,[42] that though war
may have been originally the favorite amusement and industrious employment
of our progenitors, yet, like many other excellent habits, so far from
being ameliorated, it has been cultivated and confirmed by refinement and
civilization, and increases 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 succeed