were on the alert, to quit their cathedrals, and set up a pompous hierarchy in the frozen wilderness. No craving governors were anxious to be sent over to our cheerless El Dorados of ice and of snow. No, they could not say they had encouraged, patronized, or helped the Pilgrims. They could not afterwards fairly pretend to reap where they had not strewn; and as our fathers reared this broad and solid fabric with pains and watchfulness, unaided, barely tolerated, it did not fall, when the arm, which had never supported, was raised to destroy.

Methinks I see it now, that one solitary, adventurous vessel, the Mayflower of a forlorn hope, freighted with the prospects of a future state, and bound across the unknown sea. I behold it pursuing, with a thousand migivings, the uncertain, the tedious voyage. Suns rise and set, and weeks and months pass, and winter surprises them on the deep, but brings them not the sight of the wished for shore. I see them now scantily supplied with provisons, crowded almost to suffocation in their ill-stored prison, delayed by calms, pursuing a circuitous route;—and now driven in fury before the raging tempest, on the high and giddy waves. The awful voice of the storm howls through the rigging. The laboring masts seem straining from their base ;-the dismal sound of the pumps is heard ;-the ship leaps, as it were, madly, from billow to billow ;-the ocean breaks, and settles with engulphing floods over the floating deck, and beats with deadening weight against the staggered vessel. I see them, escaped from these perils, pursuing their all but desperate undertaking, and landed at last, after a five months' passage, on the ice clad rocks of Plymouth,-weak and weary from the voyage,―poorly armed, scantily provisioned, depending on the charity of their ship-master for a draft of beer on board, drinking nothing but water on shore, without shelter,without means, surrounded by hostile tribes. Shut now the volume of history, and tell me, on any principle of human probability, what shall be the fate of this handful of ad

venturers. Tell me, man of military science, in how many months were they all swept off by the thirty savage tribes, enumerated within the early limits of New England? Tell me, politician, how long did this shadow of a colony, on which your conventions and treaties had not smiled, languish on the distant coast? Student of history, compare for me the baffled projects, the deserted settlements, the abandoned adventures, of other times, and find the parallel of this. Was it the winter's storm, beating upon the houseless heads of women and children; was it hard labor and spare meals ;— was it disease, was it the tomahawk,—was it the deep malady of a blighted hope, a ruined enterprise, and a broken heart, aching in its last moments, at the recollection of the loved and left, beyond the sea; was it some, or all of these united, that hurried this forsaken company to their melan、 choly fate?—And is it possible, that neither of these causes, that not all combined, were able to blast this bud of hope? Is it possible, that from a beginning so feeble, so frail, so worthy, not so much of admiration as of pity, there has gone forth a progress so steady, a growth so wonderful, a reality so important, a promise yet to be fulfilled, so glorious?

Favor thate heartfull of dust & astus stray into being congroad in all be prediant pride send approvo manker?

20*

EXTRACT FROM A SPEECH,

ON THE INDIAN BILL.

BY ISAAC C. BATES.

MR. Speaker, there is not an act of Georgia since Oglethorp first planted his footsteps upon the site of Savannah when duly considered; there is not a resolve, ordinance or law of Congress; there is not a treaty of the United States with the Indian tribes, that does not tend to establish the fact, that the Indians are the proprietors of the lands and hunting grounds they claim, subject only to the restriction upon their right of alienation. You might have put the question to every man in this nation, or child on the frontier, and he would have told you so, until the legislation of the States, aided by interest, instructed him otherwise. What then becomes of the tenancy at will—at sufferance, as asserted by Georgia? Not one act, law or treaty that does not establish the fact that they are sovereign. Sir, when were they otherwise? In what field were they conquered? Produce the proof. But be it what it may, it is all controlled by a single, undisputed, admitted fact-here is the nation, until this invasion of it, still sovereign. There is no tradition that has not been lost in its descent, that it was ever otherwise than sovereign. The pyramids of Egypt, upon their own broad and solid foundations, are not better proof of themselves than the Cherokee nation is of its sovereignty. Sir, the emblems of it were sparkling in the sun, when those who now inhabit Georgia, and all who ever did, were in the loins of their European ancestry; and the bird that bore them

aloft in the upper skies-the region that clouds never darkened —was not more the king of birds, than the Cherokees were the lords of the country in which they dwelt, acknowledging no supremacy but that of the Great Spirit, and awed by no power but his—absolute, erect and indomitable as any creatures upon earth the Deity ever formed.

But it is said the Constitution forbids the erection of a new State within the jurisdiction of another State,' and therefore the Cherokee government cannot be tolerated. Before I examined this subject, my own mind was embarrassed by this consideration. But upon examination it will be found that this article was drawn with great caution and forecast, and for the very purpose of saving these little sovereignties of the aboriginal inhabitants. In the first place, as has been clearly shown in this debate, they are not a "state" within the meaning of the Constitution. In the next place, they are not a "new state." They were sovereignties when the Constitution was adopted. Therefore the existence and toleration of them then was as much a violation of the Constitution as it is now. According to the Georgia doctrine, the government of the United States was then bound to do what it is now doing; that is, to put an end to the Cherokee nation. In the third place, if a state," it is not a state formed "within the jurisdiction" of Georgia. The Constitution does not say, in the often repeated phrase, within the " chartered limits," or "geographical limits," or "limits" of Georgia-terms used as if they were of the same meaning as "jurisdictional limits,"-the same lines, all coincident. No such thing. The Indian boundary is the limit of the jurisdiction of Georgia. The other lines indicate the extent of country to which she claims the right of pre-emption, and by every new purchase, of adding to her territory, and thus extending the limits of her jurisdiction.

"" new

These equivocal terms were rejected, and the word “jurisdiction" was substituted by the framers of the Constitu

tion for the word "limits"—the one extending to the Indian boundary only, and so considered by Georgia herself down to the time of this dispute, the other being the geographical boundary of the State. Now I take it upon myself to say, that after the adoption of the Constitution there was no pretence for affirming that the Cherokees were within the jurisdiction of Georgia.

What the views of the framers of that instrument were in relation to these remnants of once mighty nations, I cannot say. Probably they looked forward to the time when they would melt away or mingle with the current of white population, or pass off in some other form. Certain, I am, it was not their intention that "in their property, rights or liberty they should ever be invaded or molested." This our ancestors said in 1787; and Georgia said the same in 1802. The Cherokee nation is not, therefore, a new State, formed within the "jurisdiction" of Georgia. I do not remark upon the improvement made in their form of government, for any man of sense must see that that can make no difference. The more perfect the system the better. Less the trouble from it.

It has been said also that the United States have not extinguished the Indian title to the lands in question as agreed at the cession. I have already remarked upon the conditions of the obligation then entered into; and it is a full answer to this complaint to say, that the United States have extinguished the title until the Indians have refused to cede another acre, and that they have been always ready and willing, and are now ready to do it, if the Indians will consent to it.

Then again it is said that the indisposition to sell is the result of the civilization of the Cherokees, and that that has been brought about by the agency of the government. The answer to this is, that the United States were under obligation to do what they have done, prior to the compact of