INDIAN TREATIES.

ment with which they are connected. The new and old members of thesociety mingle with each other; the distinction between them is graduallylost, and they make one people. Where this incorporation is practicable,humanity demands, and a wise policy requires, that the rights of the con-quered to property should remain unimpaired; that the new subjectsshould be governed as equitably as the old, and that confidence in theirsecurity should gradually banish the painful sense of being separated fromtheir ancient connexions, and united by force to strangers.

When the conquest is complete, and the conquered inhabitants can beblended with the conquerors, or safely governed as a distinct people,public opinion, which not even the conqueror can disregard, imposes theserestraints upon him; and he cannot neglect them without injury to hisfame, and hazard to his power.

But the tribes of Indians inhabiting this country were fierce savages,whose occupation was war, and whose subsistence was drawn chiefly fromthe forest. To leave them in possession of their country, was to leave thecountry a wilderness; to govern them as a distinct people, was impossible,because they were as brave and as high-spirited as they were fierce, andwere ready to repel by arms every attempt on their independence.

What was the inevitable consequence of this state of things ? TheEuropeans were under the necessity either of abandoning the country,and relinquishing their pompous claims to it, or of enforcing those claimsby the sword, and by the adoption of principles adapted to the conditionof a people with whom it was impossible to mix, and who could not begoverned as a distinct society, or of remaining in their neighbourhood,and exposing themselves and their families to the perpetual hazard ofbeing massacred.

Frequent and bloody wars, in which the whites were not always theaggressors, unavoidably ensued. European policy, numbers, and skill,prevailed. As the white population advanced, that of the Indians neces-sarily receded. The country in the immediate neighbourhood of agricul-turists became unfit for them. The game fled into thicker and more un-broken forests, and the Indians followed. The soil, to which the crownoriginally claimed title, being no longer occupied by its ancient inhabitants,was parcelled out according to the will of the sovereign power, and takenpossession of by persons who claimed immediately from the crown, ormediately, through its grantees or deputies.

That law which regulates, and ought to regulate in general, the re-lations between the conqueror and conquered, was incapable of applicationto a people under such circumstances. The resort to some new and dif-ferent rule, better adapted to the actual state of things, was unavoidable.Every rule which can be suggested will be found to be attended withgreat difficulty.

However extravagant the pretension of converting the discovery of aninhabited country into conquest may appear; if the principle has beenasserted in the first instance, and afterwards sustained ; if a country hasbeen acquired and held under it; if the property of the great mass of thecommunity originates in it, it becomes the law of the land, and cannot bequestioned. So, too, with respect to the concomitant principle, that theIndian inhabitants are to be considered merely as occupants, to be pro-tected, indeed, while in peace, in the possession of their lands, but to beincapable of transferring the absolute title to others. However this re-striction may be opposed to natural right, and to the usages of civilizednations, yet, if it be indispensable to that system under which the countryhas been settled, and be adapted to the actual condition of the two people,it may, perhaps, be supported by reason, and certainly cannot be rejectedby courts of justice.

It was doubted whether a state can be seised in fee of lands subject tothe Indian title, and whether a decision that they were seised in fee, might