This is the very language which the simple people of all the new regions whither Europeans have penetrated, have been passionately and imploringly addressing for three hundred years, but in vain. We seem again to hear the supplicating voice of the people of the Seven Reductions of Paraguay, addressed to the expelling Spaniards and Portuguese. In each case it was alike unavailing. The Congress returned them a cool answer, advising the Cherokees to go over the Mississippi, where “the soil should be theirs while the trees grow, or the streams run.” But they had heard that language before, and they knew its value. The State of Georgia had avowed the doctrine of conquest, which silences all contracts and annuls all promises. It is to the honour of the Supreme Court of the United States that, on appeal to it, _it_ annulled the proceedings of Georgia, and recognised the rightful possession of the country by the Cherokees. But what power shall restrain all those engines of irritation and oppression, which white men know how to employ against coloured ones, when they want their persons or their lands. Nothing will be able to prevent the final expatriation of these southern tribes: they must pass the Mississippi till the white population is swelled sufficiently to require them to cross the Missouri; there will then remain but two barriers between them and annihilation—the rocky mountains and the Pacific Ocean. Whenever we hear now of those tribes, it is of some fresh act of aggression against them—some fresh expulsion of a portion of them—and of melancholy Indians moving off towards the western wilds. Such is the condition to which the British and their descendants have reduced the aboriginal inhabitants of the vast regions of North America,—the finest race of men that we have ever designated by the name of savage. What term we savage? The untutored heart Of Nature’s child is but a slumbering fire; Prompt at a breath, or passing touch to start Into quick flame, as quickly to retire; Ready alike its pleasance to impart, Or scorch the hand which rudely wakes its ire: Demon or child, as impulse may impel, Warm in its love, but in its vengeance fell. And these Columbian warriors to their strand Had welcomed Europe’s sons, and rued it sore:— Men with smooth tongues, but rudely armed hand; Fabling of peace, when meditating gore; Who their foul deeds to veil, ceased not to brand The Indian name on every Christian shore. What wonder, on such heads, their fury’s flame Burst, till its terrors gloomed their fairer fame? For they were not a brutish race, unknowing Evil from good; their fervid souls embraced With virtue’s proudest homage, to o’erflowing, The mind’s inviolate majesty. The past To them was not a darkness; but was glowing With splendour which all time had not o’ercast; Streaming unbroken from creation’s birth, When God communed and walked with men on earth.