A pathetic chapter in the history of colonization might be written upon the fate of native races. A great English authority on international law (Phillimore) has dealt with their claims to the proprietorship of American soil in a very summary way. "The North American Indians," he says, "would have been entitled to have excluded the British fur-traders from their hunting-grounds; and not having done so, the latter must be considered as having been admitted to a joint occupation of the territory, and thus to have become invested with a similar right of excluding strangers from such portions of the country as their own industrial operations covered." It is better to say frankly that the highest good of humanity required the dispossession of savages; and it is permissible to regret that the morals and humanity of the pioneers of civilization have not always been worthy of their errand. It rarely happens that the native, as in South Africa, has shown sufficient tenacity and stamina to resist the tide of the white aggression: more often the invaders have gradually thinned their numbers. The Spanish adventurers worked to death the soft inhabitants of the American islands. Many perished by the sword, many in a species of national decline, the wonders of civilization, for good and for bad, working an obsession in their childish imaginations which in time reacted upon the physique of the race. Sebastian Cabot has left a record of his standard of morality in dealing with the natives. When he was Grand Pilot of England it fell to his lot to give instructions to that brave Northern explorer, Sir Hugh Willoughby: "The natives of strange countries," he advises, "are to be enticed aboard and made drunk with your beer and wine, for then you shall know the secrets of their hearts." A further practice which may have caused resentment in the minds of a sensitive people, was that of kidnapping the natives to be exhibited as specimens in Europe.