ike
that little squadron which sailed out from the Straits of Saltez on the
3d of August, 1492. Many of the persons now holding these views were
formerly among the most conservative of our people; but emancipation,
negro suffrage, and the consolidation of power consequent upon the war,
have wholly unsettled their convictions, leaving them either hopeless of
the Republic, or, as temperament serves, eager to crowd on sail, and
prove at once the worst and the best of fortune. In this despair of
conservative methods, some of these men have acquired an oddly objective
way of looking at their country, which to every man ought to be a part
of himself, and have apparently as much of a curious as of a patriotic
interest in watching the development of the new forms and forces of
national life. Men of this class (and they are not few) are not likely
to hesitate in extending to the Indians citizenship and the ballot. A
little more or less, they think, can make no difference. After negro
suffrage, any thing.

Finally, we have a class of persons, who, from no impatience of the
subject, and from no indifference to the welfare of the aborigines, will
oppose the policy of seclusion, as an anomaly not to be tolerated in our
form of government. These are men who cannot bear, that, from any
assumed necessity or for any supposed advantage, exception should be
made of any class of inhabitants, or in respect to any portion of
territory, to the rule of uniform rights and responsibilities, and of
absolute freedom of movement, contract, and intercourse, the whole
nation and the whole land over. Were the Indians ten times as numerous,
were their claims to consideration stronger by no matter how much, and
were the importance to them of seclusion far more clear than it appears,
these political philosophers would steadily oppose the scheme. They
might regret the mischiefs which would result to the Indian from
exposure to corrupting influences; they might be disposed to favor the
most liberal allowances from the public treasury, in compensation to him
for his lands, and for his industrial endowment: but they would none the
less relentlessly insist that the red man should take his equal chance
with white and black, with all the privileges and all the
responsibilities of political manhood.

In view of the likelihood that the expediency of Indian citizenship will
thus become at an early date a practical legislative question, it seems
desirable in the