the cardinal maxim of despots, that "force becomes right." Five years since, we should have said without hesitation, that the American who recognized this maxim, in any sense, might properly be considered as a candidate for a cell among the lunatics in a hospital.

But what is the simple truth in regard to this matter of occupancy?-Provision has been made by the General Government, in regard to the possession and jurisdiction of the Indian reservations, within the chartered limits of the States-in the event of a legitimate extinguishment of the Indian title. Hence the States have a sort of reversionary interest in these lands, so far as jurisdiction is concerned; and, in the case of Georgia, the reversionary interest embraces the property of the soil, in consequence of the compact of 1802. But the Indians have never been under the least obligation to relinquish their title. Unless, therefore, they make a voluntary relinquishment, those who hold this reversionary interest-this misnamed seizin in fee-have no right to advance any claim upon the soil or the jurisdiction of the Indian territory, until time shall be no more. Still, as many have anticipated the ultimate extinguishment of the Indian title, contracts have sometimes been made, and cases have occurred, involving questions which have been submitted to courts of justice. Our limits will not allow us to go into detail upon this point. Whoever wishes to see what has been decided by courts relative to the civil position of the Indians, will obtain abundant satisfaction by referring to the Appendix to the articles of " William Penn." The decisions of Chief Justice Marshall and Chancellor Kent are entirely at war with every pretension of right on the part of the United States, or of an individual State, to take forcible possession of any portion of the Indian territory, or to exercise jurisdiction over the inhabitants. Chancellor Kent's decision in the case of Goodell vs. Jackson, may be safely recommended to all whose minds may have been misled by the sophistries of the North American Reviewer. And we must be allowed to request the reviewer himself to be candid enough, when he writes again, to inform his readers that the New York decision, to which he refers with so much complacency, was, as he probably knows, overruled by the illustrious author of the "Commentaries upon American Law." According to this distinguished jurist, the Indians of New York have always been separate communities, independent of the jurisdiction of the State and of the National Executive. All that he has said of the title of the Six Nations to their soil and sovereignty, nay, much more, can be urged in favor of the validity of the title of the Cherokees and other tribes of the South.

To contend that the Cherokees have a title to soil, but not to

jurisdiction, is an outrage upon common sense. Soil and jurisdiction are inseparably allied. This we hold to be a fundamental

VOL. III.NO. III.

20

article in the law of nations. And we know not why the Indians should be treated as an "anomaly," when this article is to be applied. But waiving this consideration entirely, the whole discussion relative to the title of the Cherokees to the exclusive Occupancy of their soil, and the independent administration of their government, may be brought into a narrow space. The tenure of occupancy is unlimited—it is FOREVER. It is so recognized and so guarantied by treaties. These same treaties have also recognized the Cherokees as a distinct sovereign people, and pledged the good faith of the United States as a security against all encroachment upon their rights. If the treaties do not contain such a recognition, and such a pledge, then they are all a mockery. Now, as the constitution of the United States declares treaties to be the supreme law of the land, and requires the judges of every State to be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of that State to the contrary notwithstanding, it plainly follows, that no legislature, and no judiciary, have authority to make enactments and pronounce decisions, which contravene the stipulations of treaties regularly made and regularly ratified. All opinions of judges and counsellors, therefore, so far as they affect the rights of the Indians, must be considered correct or incorrect, according to their agreement or disagreement with TREATIESTHE SUPREME LAW OF THE LAND. And if it could be proved conclusively, that other States had legislated for the Indians, as their subjects, the Cherokees could still appeal from the legislation of Georgia, to the tribunal of natural justice, and to the solemn obligations of that s"PREME LAW, to which Georgia, as a member of the Union, has pledged obedience.

It appears from the President's message, and from a communication of the Secretary of War, that the Cherokees have given special umbrage to the Executive, in consequence of an alleged encroachment upon the constitution of the United States. They are said to have established an independent government within the limits of a sovereign State-an imperium in imperio-thus infringing upon that article, which provides that no new State shall be formed within another State. The Cherokee government, therefore, must be abolished.-None but a bad cause would ever have resorted to such a pitiful sophism. Have not the Cherokees always had an independent government? If not, who have governed them? Have the people of Georgia, or the people of the United States? Surely not. They have been governed by their own laws and their own chiefs. Within a few years, they have changed the form of their government; but to pretend that they have now been establishing a government in Georgia-an imperium in imperio-when they have merely changed the form of a government which they have had and exercised from time immemorial, is preposterous,

But in regard to this imperium in imperio-this Gorgon which has of late so marvellously troubled the imaginations of some of our public men, what evils has it hitherto occasioned? For more than forty years, the Cherokees have been at peace with the United States, and are likely to remain so from age to age, unless they are wantonly molested. And if great and distressing evils existed in consequence of their situation in the midst of the whites, who should remove? The Georgians, or the Cherokees? The Georgians settled around them, not they in the midst of the Georgians. Hence the Indians are the last that should suffer. There is, however, not the least necessity of collision from the geographical positions of the two parties. The Cherokees have land enough for their accommodation, as an independent, flourishing community; although they possess but a miserable pittance in comparison with the territory of Georgia. And if the Georgians wish for more land, let them find it beyond the Mississippi.

What possible danger is to be apprehended from the Cherokees, living, as they do, remote from the dense settlements of the whites? And what would be gained, in respect to the imperium in imperio, if they should remove to the west? Will they not again be surrounded by a white population, and again frighten the Executive by this terrible Gorgon?

If we may judge from opinions which have been expressed, many seem to overlook entirely the question of right, in respect to the title of the Indian lands, and are willing that measures should be employed to affect a removal of the inhabitants, because they think such removal would be a benefit to the Indians themselves. We do wish that all who think thus, would reflect upon a late declaration of a Senator of Missouri: "I hold it to be a sound moral principle, that it is not right to inquire into the expediency of doing wrong." The Indians have in their own. hands the decision of the question, whether they will, or will not remove. We may think a removal would promote their peace and prosperity. If so, we may advise them to emigrate. But all compulsion, whether it be by military operations or by oppression and intolerable legislative enactments, is unwarrantable and atrocious.

It is sufficient for us, that the Indians are opposed to a removal. We are aware, that Col. McKenney, as quoted in the N. A. Review, asserts the contrary; and we have no doubt, that much false information on this point has been communicated to the Executive. The editor of the Cherokee Phoenix has given Col. McKenney such a reply to his statements, as we presume he will not very soon forget. The plain truth is, that for many years, U. S. Agents have been laboring to persuade the Cherokees to remove. Argument and intreaty figures of speech and figures of arithmetic--pathos of emotion and pathos of gold-have been most liberally and earn

estly employed; and yet the Cherokees are immoveable. How then can the officers of our government any longer be deceived? Why will they not take the testimony of the Cherokee memorial to the present Congress? Why will they continue to delude themselves with the idle fiction, that the great body of the people are so much in awe of a few "powerful chiefs," that they dare not speak out the real wishes of their hearts?—Again and again, has the voice of this afflicted, persecuted community, been reiterated with thundering emphasis: "WE WILL NOT REMOVE ;--WE LIVE ON THE SOIL OF OUR FATHERS, AND HERE WE ARE RESOLVED TO FIND OUR GRAVES.'

It is sufficient, we have said, that they are opposed to a removal. It is more than sufficient, that they are opposed, for the best possible reasons. So far as any country has been designated for their future residence, it is a country which has been pronounced by an United States' Agent, to be uninhabitable by a people who wish to devote themselves to agriculture. It consists chiefly of prairies-almost entirely destitute of wood and water. The country has also been explored by some Chickasaw Indians, who are willing to emigrate, provided a suitable territory can be furnished. Their testimony agrees entirely with the representations of Major Long. The astonishing truth is, that notwithstanding all that has been said on the subject of lands for the Indians across the Mississippi, the United States have not at their disposal a suitable tract of country where the Southern tribes could be colonized. There is indeed" an ample district west of the Mississippi," but nearly all that would answer the purposes of the people in question, is either pre-occupied, -or is subject to Indian titles unextinguished, or lies in a latitude which would be destructive to Indians who have been inured to a Southern climate! Besides, if the territory offered the Indians was as eligible as any portion of the U. S., if a fair equivalent was paid for all improvements on their present soil, even then, a removal would be attended with immense sacrifices. The plan of the Executive embraces the removal of not less than 60,000 souls. The Secretary of War estimates them at 75, 000. Think now of the emigration of 60,000 people-" from helpless infancy to the decrepitude of age"-to a wilderness, many hundred miles distant from their present abode! Think of the emigration of all the inhabitants of Essex or Suffolk county, to a vast region of prairies, there to erect habitations and cultivate the ground for subsistence ! Dwell upon the scene-and no language can portray its horror.

By a singular coincidence, the same Number of the Review which contains the article upon which we have animadverted, presents us with a most affecting picture of the sufferings of the Acadians, who were barbarously expelled from Nova Scotia, We should think that every man, who should read the article upon Haliburton's History of Nova Scotia, before or after perusing that

which precedes in the order of arrangement, would find it impossible to sympathize with the cold-blooded vindication of the cruel and inhuman project for the "Removal of the Indians." We ought, perhaps, in justice to the reviewer, to mention for the infor mation of those who have not read his article, that he seems to have a little relenting, as he approaches the conclusion of his work.

"After all," he says "it cannot be denied, and ought not to be concealed, that in this transplantation from the soil of their ancestors to the plains of the Mississippi, some mental and corporeal sufferings await the emigrants. These are inseparable from the measure itself."

upon the occasion, that he He then proceeds:

His feelings soon become so tender sheds some very pretty classical tears. "Although the Indians are migratory in their habits, yet their local attachments are strong and enduring. The sepulchres of their fathers are as dear to them, as they ever were to the natives of the East. Those ties have bound them to their native regions longer and stronger than any other, or all other considerations."

If these things are true of the degraded savages, with whom the writer has been conversant, how much more of intensity should be added to his remarks, when they are applied to the Cherokees,a people, not like the Sacs, and Winnebagoes-but who have houses, and farms, and plantations. How do the Indians of the South contemplate the prospect of a removal?-"We are told that the white man is about to bring his laws over us. We are distressed. Our hands are not strong. We are a small people. Whe white man has strong arms, many warriors, and much knowledge. He is about to lay his laws upon us. We are distressed. O that our great father would love us! O that the white man would love us !"

It is truly astonishing that the Executive of the U. S. should suppose it practicable to colonize the Indian tribes, under such circumstances as would furnish the least hope of their future prosperity. To bring together into a new country, 60,000 Indians, of different tribes, of different languages, of different habits, and different prejudices, with the design of "teaching them the arts of civilization, and by promoting union and harmony among them, to raise up an interesting commonwealth, destined to perpetuate the race, and to attest the humanity of this government'

appears to us, when viewed in reference to political sagacity, to be the most insane and ridiculous project, which was ever conceived by rational men. But if the trial of its feasibility would be as harmless as some other vagaries of Quixotism have been, we should not feel the painful solicitude that we now feel. Should the wishes of the Executive be so far carried into effect, as to secure an emigration of the Indians, the world will witness an appalling spectacle of confusion, and anarchy, and wretchedness. If the government wish the Indians to be taught the arts of civilization, and exhibit to the

• President's Message.