"In such light assuredly do I take it," observed Major Montgomerie, bowing his sense of the disclaimer. "But to prove to you, general, that we are only following in the course pursued by every other people of the world, let us, without going back to the days of barbarism, when the several kingdoms of Europe were overrun by the strongest, and when your own country in particular became in turn the prey of Saxons, Danes, Normans, &c., merely glance our eyes upon those provinces which have been subjugated by more civilized Europe. Look at South America, for instance, and then say what we have done that has not been far exceeded by the Spaniards, in that portion of the hemisphere--and yet, with this vast difference in the balance, that there the European drove before him and mercilessly destroyed an unoffending race, while we, on the contrary, have had fierce hostility and treachery everywhere opposed to our progress. The Spaniards, moreover, offered no equivalent for the country subdued; now we have ever done so, and only where that equivalent has been rejected, have we found ourselves compelled to resort to force. Look again at the islands of the West Indies, the chief of which are conquests by England. Where are the people to whom Providence had originally assigned those countries, until the European, in his thirst for aggrandizement, on that very principle of might which you condemn, tore them violently away. Gone, extirpated, until scarce a vestige of their existence remains, even as it must be, in the course of time, with the Indians of these wilds--perhaps not in this century or the next, but soon or late assuredly. These two people--the South Americans and Caribs--I particularly instance, for the very reason that they offer the most striking parallel with the immediate subject under discussion. But shall I go further than this, gentlemen, and maintain that we, the United States, are only following in the course originally pointed out to us by England." "I should be glad to hear your argument," said the Commodore, drawing his chair closer to the table. "And I," added the General, "consider the position too novel not to feel interested in the manner in which it will be maintained." "I will not exactly say," observed Colonel D'Egville, smiling one of his blandest smiles, and few men understood the winning art better than himself, "that Major Montgomerie has the happy talent of making the worse appear the better cause; but certainly, I never remember to have heard that cause more ably advocated."