Douglas endorsed the plan as of advantage both to the Indians and to the Colony and then sketched the principles upon which he proposed to establish reserves on the mainland. In the first place, the reserves should "in all cases include their cultivated fields and village sites, for which from habit and association they invariably conceive a strong attachment, and prize more, for that reason, than for the extent or value of the land."[60]. Such settlements, in the second place, were to be entirely self-supporting. The Governor here adverted to the plan pursued in the United States with regard to Indian reservations, but stated that that plan was expensive to the Government and debasing to the Indians. The system followed by the Spanish missions in California, likewise, he regarded as defective, in that it kept the Indians in a state of pupilage and did not train them to self-government and self-reliance. He would avoid the evils of both these systems and, in particular, cultivate the pride of independence. He proposed to that end, that each family have title to its own plot of ground, but without power of alienation; that they should be encouraged to add to their possessions by purchasing property apart from the reserve; "that they should in all respects be treated as rational beings, capable of acting and thinking for themselves; and, lastly, that they should be placed under proper moral and religious training and then be left, under the protection of the laws, to provide for their own support."[61] "I have impressed upon the miners," wrote Douglas to Lytton, "the great fact that the law will protect the Indian equally with the white man, and regard him in all respects as a fellow subject."[62] "The Indian population," he wrote to another, "are considered by the laws of England as fellow subjects, entitled to protection and punishable, when guilty of offenses, through the sole action of the law."[63] In a review of the Colonial Indian policy, written in 1875, the Attorney General stated that that policy "was based on the broad and experimental principle of treating the Indian as a fellow subject."[64] It now remains for us to inquire how this Indian policy, so based, was applied by the Colonial Government to this class of Her Majesty's subjects; not omitting, as we do so, to notice contrasts to administration in the United States.