of the speech the general
recommendation to make all proper effort for the advancement of
manufactures, commerce, and agriculture.

The speech as a whole, short though it was, drew the outline of
a vigorous system, which aimed at the establishment of a strong
government with enlarged powers. It cut at a blow all ties between the
new government and the feeble strivings of the dead confederation. It
displayed a broad conception of the duties of the government under
the Constitution, and in every paragraph it breathed the spirit of a
robust nationality, calculated to touch the people directly in every
State of the Union.

Before taking up the financial question, which became the great issue
in our domestic affairs, it will be well to trace briefly the story of
our relations with the Indians. The policy of the new administration
in this respect was peculiarly Washington's own, and, although it
affected more or less the general course of events at that period, it
did not directly become the subject of party differences. The "Indian
problem" is still with us, but it is now a very mild problem indeed.
Within a few years, it is true, we have had Indian wars, conducted by
the forces of the United States, and ever-recurring outbreaks between
savages and frontiersmen. But it has been a very distant business. To
the great mass of the American people it has been little more than
interesting news, to be leisurely scanned in the newspaper without
any sense of immediate and personal concern. Moreover, the popular
conception of the Indian has for a long time been wildly inaccurate.
We have known him in various capacities, as the innocent victim of
corrupt agents and traders, and as the brutal robber and murderer with
the vices and force of the Western frontiersman, but without any of
the latter's redeeming virtues. Last and most important of all, we
have known him as the rare hero and the conventional villain of
romance, ranging from the admirable stories of Cooper to the last
production of the "penny dreadful." The result has been to create in
the public mind a being who probably never existed anywhere except in
the popular imagination, and who certainly is not the North American
Indian.

We are always loath to admit that our conceptions are formed by
fiction, but in the case of people remote from our daily observation
it plays in nine instances out of ten a leading part, and it has
certainly done so here. In this way we have been