f, but shall he
control the civilization of a world? Shall he forbid the wilderness
to blossom like a rose? Shall he forbid the oaks of the forest to fall
before the axe of industry, and to rise again, transformed into the
habitations of ease and elegance? shall he doom an immense region of the
globe to perpetual desolation, and to hear the howlings of the tiger and
the wolf silence forever the voice of human gladness? Shall the fields
and the valleys, which a beneficent God has formed to teem with the life
of innumerable multitudes, be condemned to everlasting barrenness? Shall
the mighty rivers, poured out by the hand of nature, as channels of
communication between numerous nations, roll their waters in sullen
silence and eternal solitude of the deep? Have hundreds of commodious
harbors, a thousand leagues of coast, and a boundless ocean, been spread
in the front of this land, and shall every purpose of utility to which
they could apply be prohibited by the tenant of the woods? No, generous
philanthropists! Heaven has not been thus inconsistent in the works of
its hands. Heaven has not thus placed at irreconcilable strife its moral
laws with its physical creation. The Pilgrims of Plymouth obtained their
right of possession to the territory on which they settled, by titles
as fair and unequivocal as any human property can be held. By their
voluntary association they recognized their allegiance to the government
of Britain, and in process of time received whatever powers and
authorities could be conferred upon them by a charter from their
sovereign. The spot on which they fixed had belonged to an Indian tribe,
totally extirpated by that devouring pestilence which had swept the
country shortly before their arrival. The territory, thus free from
all exclusive possession, they might have taken by the natural right
of occupancy. Desirous, however, of giving amply satisfaction to every
pretence of prior right, by formal and solemn conventions with the
chiefs of the neighboring tribes, they acquired the further security of
a purchase. At their hands the children of the desert had no cause
of complaint. On the great day of retribution, what thousands, what
millions of the American race will appear at the bar of judgment to
arraign their European invading conquerors! Let us humbly hope that
the fathers of the Plymouth Colony will then appear in the whiteness of
innocence. Let us indulge in the belief that they will not only be fr