Judging from the specimens of the laws proposed in Congress for the benefit of California, and which, thanks to the knowledge, wisdom and eloquence of Hon. T. H. Benton, Senator from Missouri, failed to go into effect, we fear that that honorable body is in danger of running on shoals in its legislative measures relating to this country, and particularly in laws affecting landed property. The gentlemen in Congress apply their American ideas of the value of landed property to a country that has been, so to say, born and raised under Spanish system of laws, and is totally different from any of the States in its domestic and civil arrangements. It would be impossible by any legislative act to change suddenly the character of former civil institutions of the country without committing outrageous injustice to its inhabitants, and even running the risk of raising their opposition. California, as well as New Mexico, comes into the Union as a full-grown man, whose habits are already formed, connects himself by ties of matrimony with another family; his new relations, if they be wise, do not wish him to be like themselves in every particular, but gradually by gentle influences, try to assimilate him to themselves, in which, in the long run, they will succeed. This is precisely the position of the government of the Union in regard to these newly acquired territories. To assimilate them by degrees without doing violence or injustice to their habits and possessions, should be the rule of a wise legislation. They are not to be punished for what, in the eyes of American legislators, appears to be defective in the Spanish or Mexican laws; if so, it would be doing violence to justice, to the laws of nations, and to the very late treaty by which the American government bound itself to respect their rights of property precisely as the Mexican government would have done or did do. The plain meaning of this is that the government of the United States is bound to recognize and legalize after its fashion to suit its system of laws, the present possessions of the Californians as it finds them, and has no right to go behind the fact of actual possession and scrutinize and invalidate them. The Mexican government has left them so, as we find them, and if it had continued its sway in these countries, there is no possible doubt but it would not have disturbed them. These people who were brought up to tend their cattle on a large surface of land, as their grazing farms are, without any knowledge of any other mode of getting a living, if cut down to the American idea of a farm, of a hundred and eighty acres, or supposing even a section of 640 acres, would be reduced to beggary, nay, worse, to servitude. Would such a step be creditable to an enlightened, Christian nation like the United States? Tending cattle is their only occupation and only knowledge; it will take some time before they be trained to a different mode of life.