It should be observed that no injunctions to communicate either are given in the instructions for the “Protectors of Indians,” or in those for the post-holders; and two of the articles of the latter, (Art. 14 and Art. 15,) tend directly to sanction and encourage immorality. All reports agree in stating that these tribes have been almost wholly neglected, are retrograding, and are without provision for their moral or civil advancement; and with due allowance for the extenuating remarks on the poor account to which they turned their lands, when they had them, and the gifts (baneful gifts some of them) which have been distributed, and on the advantage of living under British laws, we must still concur in the sentiment of Lord Goderich, as expressed in the same letter, upon a reference as to sentence of death passed upon a native Indian for the murder of another. “It is a serious consideration that we have subjected these tribes to the penalties of a code of which they unavoidably live in profound ignorance; they have not even that conjectural knowledge of its provisions which would be suggested by the precepts of religion, if they had even received the most elementary instruction in the Christian faith. They are brought into acquaintance with civilised life not to partake its blessings, but only to feel the severity of its penal sanctions.” “A debt is due to the aboriginal inhabitants of British Guiana of a very different kind from that which the inhabitants of Christendom may, in a certain sense, be said to owe in general to other barbarous tribes. The whole territory which has been occupied by Europeans, on the northern shores of the South American Continent, has been acquired by no other right than that of superior power; and I fear that the natives whom we have dispossessed, have to this day received no compensation for the loss of the lands on which they formerly subsisted. However urgent is the duty of economy in every branch of the public service, it is impossible to withhold from the natives of the country the inestimable benefit which they would derive from appropriating to their religious and moral instruction some moderate part of that income which results from the culture of the soil to which they or their fathers had an indisputable title.”[57] CARIBS. Of the Caribs, the native inhabitants of the West Indies, we need not speak, as of them little more remains than the tradition that they once existed. CHAPTER XXIV. TREATMENT OF THE INDIANS BY THE UNITED STATES. “We were born on this spot; our fathers lie buried in it. Shall we say to the bones of our fathers—‘Arise and come with us into a foreign land?’”—_Speech of a Canadian Indian to the French invaders._