re the ax 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 to 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 ample satisfaction to every pretense 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
free from all accusation of injustice to these unfortunate sons of
nature, but that the testimonials of their acts of kindness and
benevolence towa