108                    PAPERS RELATING TO THE
tinued, and remains, when it ought to have been pulled clown in the beginning by force.
Now the English regard that post as an acquired right, and rely on the article in the Treaty of Utrecht, which states that the French will not molest the Five Cantons of Indians, subjects of Great Britain. The engagement that France has contracted by that article reduces itself to not attacking the Iro-quois, against whom the English were, at that time, apprehensive the Canadians would wage war. But, besides, what is said of the authority of the English over the Iroquois, is a simple enunciation; it does not constitute a title ; it could not make subjects of the Iroquois; they do not depend on England either in fact or of right; they have made war and peace before and since the treaty of Utrecht, without the consent and against the will of the English; they have publicly protested their independence, which they have constantly enjoyed without the English having dared or daring to contradict them in America. Moreover, this article of the Treaty of Utrecht, however favorable it may be presumed to be to the English, leaves the question of territory totally undecided; the stipulations it contains respecting the liberty the Indians shall enjoy, of visiting indiscriminately the Colonies of both Nations, and the mutual obligations not to molest them, deprive the French of no possessory rights they might have acquired, anteriorly, over territories not yet subject to any proprietorship, whereof the Indians have not even an idea; besides, the personal subjection of these Nations would not entail that of a country, because they have no circumscribed limits,and being liable to change of habitation, being, really, dispersed in divers places, in which privilege they are not to experience any molestation, it would follow from the pretension of the English that the Iroquois would transport the Dominion of England, in every place they might transport their habitations to, even were it in the centre of the French Colonies, such as the vicinity of Montreal, where two villages have been formed. The absurdity of the consequence demonstrates both the little foundation of this pretence and the necessity to return from it to the preliminary question, to wit: Who first took possession of that territory? Then the question can neither be doubtful nor equivocal in favor of France.
We shall not enter here into any lengthy discussion on the point of right; but we must not omit observing that this post, which has been almost regarded as an object of trifling importance, is capable of causing the entire ruin of Canada, and has already inflicted on it the greatest injury. There it is that the French often carry on a fraudulent trade