death; if to be imprisoned is
so nearly to be entombed; and if, after all, the murderers are to be
protected, and thereby the crime encouraged, wherein do you differ from
[American] Indians either in conduct or character?

We can have no idea of your honor, or your justice, in any future
transaction, of what nature it may be, while you shelter within your
lines an outrageous murderer, and sacrifice in his stead an officer of
your own. If you have no regard to us, at least spare the blood which
it is your duty to save. Whether the punishment will be greater on him,
who, in this case, innocently dies, or on him whom sad necessity forces
to retaliate, is, in the nicety of sensation, an undecided question? It
rests with you to prevent the sufferings of both. You have nothing to do
but to give up the murderer, and the matter ends.

But to protect him, be he who he may, is to patronize his crime, and to
trifle it off by frivolous and unmeaning inquiries, is to promote it.
There is no declaration you can make, nor promise you can give that will
obtain credit. It is the man and not the apology that is demanded.

You see yourself pressed on all sides to spare the life of your own
officer, for die he will if you withhold justice. The murder of Captain
Huddy is an offence not to be borne with, and there is no security which
we can have, that such actions or similar ones shall not be repeated,
but by making the punishment fall upon yourselves. To destroy the last
security of captivity, and to take the unarmed, the unresisting prisoner
to private and sportive execution, is carrying barbarity too high for
silence. The evil must be put an end to; and the choice of persons rests
with you. But if your attachment to the guilty is stronger than to the
innocent, you invent a crime that must destroy your character, and if
the cause of your king needs to be so supported, for ever cease, sir,
to torture our remembrance with the wretched phrases of British honor,
British generosity and British clemency.

From this melancholy circumstance, learn, sir, a lesson of morality. The
refugees are men whom your predecessors have instructed in wickedness,
the better to fit them to their master's purpose. To make them useful,
they have made them vile, and the consequence of their tutored villany
is now descending on the heads of their encouragers. They have been
trained like hounds to the scent of blood, and cherished in every
species of dissolute ba