Both nations clamour, with great vehemence, about infractions of limits, violation of treaties, open usurpation, insidious artifices, and breach of faith. The English rail at the perfidious French, and the French at the encroaching English: they quote treaties on each side, charge each other with aspiring to universal monarchy, and complain, on either part, of the insecurity of possession near such turbulent neighbours. Through this mist of controversy, it can raise no wonder, that the truth is not easily discovered. When a quarrel has been long carried on between individuals, it is often very hard to tell by whom it was begun. Every fact is darkened by distance, by interest, and by multitudes. Information is not easily procured from far; those whom the truth will not favour, will not step, voluntarily, forth to tell it; and where there are many agents, it is easy for every single action to be concealed. All these causes concur to the obscurity of the question: By whom were hostilities in America commenced? Perhaps there never can be remembered a time, in which hostilities had ceased. Two powerful colonies, inflamed with immemorial rivalry, and placed out of the superintendence of the mother nations, were not likely to be long at rest. Some opposition was always going forward, some mischief was every day done or meditated, and the borderers were always better pleased with what they could snatch from their neighbours, than what they had of their own. In this disposition to reciprocal invasion, a cause of dispute never could be wanting. The forests and deserts of America are without landmarks, and, therefore, cannot be particularly specified in stipulations; the appellations of those wide-extended regions have, in every mouth, a different meaning, and are understood, on either side, as inclination happens to contract or extend them. Who has yet pretended to define, how much of America is included in Brazil, Mexico, or Peru? It is almost as easy to divide the Atlantick ocean by a line, as clearly to ascertain the limits of those uncultivated, uninhabitable, unmeasured regions. It is, likewise, to be considered, that contracts concerning boundaries are often left vague and indefinite, without necessity, by the desire of each party, to interpret the ambiguity to its own advantage, when a fit opportunity shall be found. In forming stipulations, the commissaries are often ignorant, and often negligent; they are, sometimes, weary with debate, and contract a tedious discussion into general terms, or refer it to a former treaty, which was never understood. The weaker part is always afraid of requiring explanations, and the stronger always has an interest in leaving the question undecided: thus it will happen, without great caution on either side, that, after long treaties, solemnly ratified, the rights that had been disputed are still equally open to controversy.