It is a principle recognised by the civilised nations of the Earth that the discovery of a waste and uninhabited land by a pioneering country confers on that country a right, as against all other civilised countries, to colonise its new discovery. In such a case the discovering nation may in fact go further, by immediately taking possession of the new-found territory, and assuming sovereignty over it. In this way Norfolk Island being found devoid of inhabitants by Captain Cook, his discovery of the sea-girt isle not only entitled Britain to colonise it, but automatically added it to the possessions of the Empire. This principle has thus been concisely stated by Vattel: "All men have an equal right to the things which have not yet fallen into the possession of any one; and these things appertain to the first occupant. Wherefore, when a nation finds a country uninhabited and without a master, it may lawfully seize upon the same, and after it has adequately denoted its will in this respect another cannot thereof despoil it. Thus navigators going on their voyages of discovery, provided with a commission from their sovereign, and falling in with desert islands, or other desert lands, have taken possession of them in the name of their nation, and commonly this title has been respected, provided that thereupon a real possession has closely followed." It is equally an acknowledged maxim of the Law of Nations that should the newly discovered land not prove to be "waste and without a master," but that it should be inhabited and under government of any kind, then the mere fact of its discovery by a civilised nation confers upon the discoverer no title to the soil, but only the prior right to colonise as against other colonising nations. This is but the natural reward which belongs to the enterprise displayed in fitting out ships and expeditions destined to navigate unknown seas or to travel in unknown lands. Such prior right to colonise is, however, strictly limited by the important consideration that colonisation can only take place with the free will and consent of the savage or semi-civilised inhabitants of the newly discovered country. In no sense does the act of discovery confer the right of property in the land, or the right of sovereignty over its people. That is to say, in the abstract, no nation whatever can under any pretext violate the rights of any other independent nation. This was clearly the principle which guided those British Governments to whose lot fell the establishment of the first colonies in America. In all these cases was the property of the Indian tribes respected, and no land was acquired save by purchase, or by some other equitable arrangement made with the aboriginal owners.[156] Hence in the celebrated case of the Cherokee tribe against the State of Georgia, tried in 1832, before the late Chief-Justice Marshall, that eminent judge was able to declare that as the United States had only inherited its rights from Great Britain