Notwithstanding these essential opposites in character and policy, to which may be added that of physiognomy, writers have glanced at them as one race, sprung from the same branch of the human family, and without defining which; and when they could not reconcile such apparently unaccountable distinctions and diversities, they have thrown upon the shoulders of the Mexican, the mantle of manly virtue belonging to the North; and upon this race they have thrust the idolatrous vices and the festering robes of luxury justly claimed by the former people; and by this easy manner of disposing of a question, have seemingly satisfied themselves that by blending the crimes of both, to the exclusion of the virtues of either, that they were all "_savages_," and no matter from whence they came. Thus have they formed their conclusions concerning fifty millions of human beings, although directly in opposition to evidences of fact, to deductions by relative reasoning, and to all Christian feeling, which alone should have rejected so cruel a decision, founded as it is, not only on slight, but careless investigation. A sufficient identity of the Northern native is now required, in order to establish the national distinction between the Aborigines of the two Americas. In all civilized countries when the _lex scripta_ fails to develope, or protect, the historical events and rights of a nation or of an individual, then the _lex_ NON _scripta_ is not only not rejected, but it is actually brought forward to establish, and support the customs and privileges of a by-gone day. This traditionary evidence, handed down from sire to son, is received in proof of "a foregone conclusion:" it gives an insight into the times, of which no written record is left for the investigation of Argus-eyed posterity; it carries us back to customs, civil, military, and religious, that otherwise might be lost to the archives of history. Admitting, therefore, this train of reasoning, we bring it to bear upon the present important subject;--important in the highest degree, for the time is now past when the Western Hemisphere is to be dated from the _re-discovery_ by Columbus. His giant, but over-applauded name, like the ruins of Palenque, is but the lettering of a volume to indicate in the library of the universe that such a work was written--the work itself (_i. e._ the great continent) has yet to be read, and the historical authors identified; nor will the well-grounded supposition that the Welsh prince, Madoc, colonised in America two centuries before the Genoese; or that the Norwegian landed three centuries anterior to the Welsh, enable us even to unclasp the volume;--to accomplish this, and its translation, an historic Œiliad must be cast over a period of more than two thousand annual changes, of nature's revolving but faithful time-glass! Granting then, that when the _lex scripta_ will not cover a subject, the _lex_ NON _scripta_