ristian nations in Europe, as a mere butchery, a bloody and
unnatural piece of cruelty, unjustifiable either to God or man; and for
which the very name of a Spaniard is reckoned to be frightful and
terrible to all people of humanity, or of Christian compassion; as if
the kingdom of Spain were particularly eminent for the produce of a race
of men who were without principles of tenderness, or the common bowels
of pity to the miserable, which is reckoned to be a mark of generous
temper in the mind.

These considerations really put me to a pause, and to a kind of a full
stop; and I began, by little and little, to be off my design, and to
conclude I had taken wrong measures in my resolution to attack the
savages; and that it was not my business to meddle with them, unless
they first attacked me; and this it was my business, if possible, to
prevent; but that if I were discovered and attacked by them, I knew my
duty. On the other hand, I argued with myself, that this really was the
way not to deliver myself, but entirely to ruin and destroy myself; for
unless I was sure to kill every one that not only should be on shore at
that time, but that should ever come on shore afterwards, if but one of
them escaped to tell their country-people what had happened, they would
come over again by thousands to revenge the death of their fellows, and
I should only bring upon myself a certain destruction, which, at
present, I had no manner of occasion for. Upon the whole, I concluded,
that neither in principle nor in policy, I ought, one way or other, to
concern myself in this affair: that my business was, by all possible
means, to conceal myself from them, and not to leave the least signal to
them to guess by that there were any living creatures upon the island, I
mean of human shape. Religion joined in with this prudential resolution;
and I was convinced now, many ways, that I was perfectly out of my duty
when I was laying all my bloody schemes for the destruction of innocent
creatures, I mean innocent as to me. As to the crimes they were guilty
of towards one another, I had nothing to do with them; they were
national, and I ought to leave them to the justice of God, who is the
governor of nations, and knows how, by national punishments, to make a
just retribution for national offences, and to bring public judgments
upon those who offend in a public manner, by such ways as best please
him. This appeared so clear to me now, that nothing was a