ndians, who have thus far been
treated as "the wards of the nation," directly into the body of our
citizenship. We have, first, those who have become impatient of the
demands made upon the time of Congress and the attention of the people
in the name of the Indians, and who wish, once for all, to have done
with them. Such impatience is neither unnatural nor wholly unreasonable.
It must be confessed that no good work ever made heavier drafts upon the
faith and patience of the philanthropic. What with the triviality of the
Indian character, the absurd punctilio with which, in his lowest estate,
he insists on embarrassing the most ordinary business, and his devotion
to sentiments utterly repugnant to our social and industrial genius;
what, again, with the endless variety of tribal relations and tribal
claims, and the complexity of tribal interests, aggravated by jealousy
and suspicion where no previous intercourse has existed, and by feuds
and traditions of hatred where intercourse has existed,--the conduct of
Indian affairs, whether in legislation or in administration, is in no
small degree perplexing and irritating. The Indian treaties prior to
1842 make up one entire volume of the General Statutes, while the
treaties and Indian laws since that date would fill two volumes of equal
size. It cannot be denied that this is taking a good deal of trouble for
a very small and not very useful portion of the population of the
country: and it is not to be wondered at that many citizens, and not a
few Congressmen, are much disposed to cut the knot instead of untying
it, and summarily dismiss the Indian as the subject of peculiar
consideration, by enfranchising him, not for any good it may do to him,
but for the relief of our legislation.

Next, we have that large and increasing class of Americans, who, either
from natural bias, or from the severe political shocks of the last
twelve years, have accepted what we may call the politics of despair, by
which is meant, not so much a belief in any definite ill fortune for the
Republic, as a conviction that the United States are being borne on to
an end not seen, by a current which it is impossible to resist; that it
is futile longer to seek to interpose restraints upon the rate of this
progress, or to change its direction; that the nation has already gone
far outside the traditional limits of safe political navigation, and is
taking its course, for weal or woe, across an unknown sea, not unl