Britain, we should "augur misgovernment at a distance, and snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze." These were our characteristics as colonies; these were the traits of our youthful independence.

Under the administration of Washington, the people were more watchful of governmental movements, and better acquainted with the Constitution, than they are now, when knowledge and vigilance are more deeply necessary. The Constitution had then been just formed; every paragraph was familiarly known; it was an experiment which they resolved should be fairly tested. The essays of Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, were widely circulated; the whole country was alert; no act in the slightest degree unconstitutional could have imposed upon the people. Now, we are sluggish, incautious, confident in the success of our republic, and easy as to the operations of government. Amidst the dissemination of all other knowledge, the study of the Constitution has diminished; in regard to most public measures, the mass of the community are absolutely ignorant what is their character in the light of republican principles, what their immediate influence, or what their future consequences. Sophistry blinds them, and they become persuaded, in very important instances, that inhuman and unconstitutional measures are right.

No question like this, touching the rights of a large portion of the community, ought ever to enter Congress, till it has undergone a thorough consideration in the public mind. Then, should occasion require, the people will be ready to interpose, and with a prompt, decided, energetic authority. They will not need to be urged into remonstrance against a meditated act of injustice; it will be their simultaneous movement, from Maine to the Texas. No government, in the slightest degree considerate, would dare, by any illegal step, to encounter the energy of such an enlightened public opinion. But if the people sleep, a dangerous measure may be passed, and its consequences irretrievable, before they can be brought to a solemn consideration of the subject. To guard effectually against such a state of things, the only sure provision is a correct moral sentiment, combined with a universal knowledge of the Constitution.

The Indian question has been suffered to take us by surprise, and to find us, as a community, unacquainted with its merits. The sophistry of the enemies to Indian rights seemed to blind for a time the whole public mind, and distort the moral sense of the country. The bill in Congress was suffered to be carried as a party measure. The efforts made by the friends of humanity to wake the country into seasonable action, fell clogged by the ignorance and perversion of feeling so generally prevalent. Memorials were neither sufficiently quick nor numerous to exert a powerful interposition. Many believed and argued there was a fatality in this

whole business; that it was a fiat in God's providence that the Indians must die; and that all we could do to resist it would be in vain. Such a belief was scarcely accompanied with pity; the thing was talked of with as much indifference as if the Indian tribes were but a great herd of buffaloes. Few individuals in the country had any knowledge whatever of the actual condition of the Cherokees; all the Indians were looked upon as savages; and a man hazarded the charge of enthusiasm if he was warm in their defence, or came up, in any degree as he ought, to the performance of duty. People were really ashamed to memorialize; they shrunk from cold looks and sneers, if urged to engage with ardor in the task of procuring petitioners. Christians were afraid of the cry of church and state; others were fearful of meddling with what did not concern them; others declared that such an excitement at the north wonld only prejudice the cause, and all, being ignorant of the character and rights of the Indians and of the true merits of the case, and of course having no stable principles to guide them, entered on the measures in their favor with reluctance, and even then half repented of the little they had done. There was this evil also, that most of those who signed memorials did it without expecting success; they did it with a sort of melancholy, hopeless resignation, accompanied with many doubts in regard to the necessity of the measure, that "cast ominous conjecture," or in the more expressive conventional phrase, "threw cold water," on the whole thing. "I will sign, but I don't think it will be the least use to memorialize," was the common strain of remark. Nothing good, or to any purpose, will ever be done in such a state of feeling. On the part of Christians, there was a sad want of firmness and moral courage. "What will the political world say of us? of us? Shall we not be derided?" Or if these were not the questions, conscience was so little enlightened, that it did not tell them the great duty of humanity incumbent on them to discharge. There was likewise a general disposition to act too exclusively as individuals; a dread of exciting odium and sarcasm by combining in this benevolent cause; an unwillingness to acknowledge the responsibility of making our neighbors act and feel right, as well as of doing right ourselves. We might be ready to sign in our own persons, but were unwilling to use self-denial, or make sacrifices, for the purpose of obtaining additional signatures. But did we do right, if we merely recorded our own solitary protest, and refused to carry the paper to others, or to persuade those within our influence? The great law of Christian love enforces its claims upon us collectively as well as individually; to a certain extent we are responsible for the belief and practice of all with whom we associate. If the friends of the Indians had exerted themselves as they ought, there would have been five thousand signatures where there were five hundred; and the memorials, as have often been the fact in

Great Britain, would have literally covered the tables of Congress; accomplishing, as their result, a triumphant vote in behalf of suffering humanity. But our habit of regarding the Indians as a degraded race, destined for extinction, our indifference as to their fate, and the obstinate disbelief of their advancement in civilization, in addition to the prevailing want of acquaintance with our country's Constitution, treaties and history, prepared us to receive the scheme of the President with no very sensitive marks of displeasure, and to witness the despotic course in the proposed expulsion of the Indians with an apathy most criminal and alarming. Because the oppression did not enter our doors, we ceased to regard it as unjust.

The duty of memorializing in this country is not understood. The people are unacquainted with their own best interests, too confident in the wisdom and patriotism of government, and so selfish as to be politically blind. The English are better acquainted with this duty, and more ready for its performance. The form of our government is so much more favorable to freedom than theirs, that we seem to think the Constitution will preserve our liberties, instead of remembering that nothing but our utmost vigilance can preserve the Constitution. In the year 1791, when exertions were vigorous for the abolition of the slave trade, "there was not a day for three months, Sundays excepted, in which five or six petitions to parliament were not resolved upon in some places or other in the kingdom." In that year, five hundred and nineteen were presented for the total abolition. If we are not mistaken, Mr. Clarkson himself, in the space of four weeks, obtained seventy thousand signatures. Who here could have gained such a result for the Sabbath, or the Indians? Those who know anything about English history, remember what multitudes of petitions and memorials poured in upon the House of Commons about the period of our Revolution; some, among the most forcible, written by Mr. Burke and Sir George Saville, who were not thought to be out of their station in this employment. But here, active petitioners for objects of benevolence are styled meddling enthusiasts; and one would really think, from the tone which many have not been ashamed to use, that we are out of our place when attempting to influence the measures of our own Representatives, by the expression of our own wishes. It will be a new thing indeed when the people of this republic are interdicted from an interference in the proceedings of government by the expression of their views, whenever and in whatever manner they please. The manner in which an excitement for objects of public benevolence is said to be "got up," is also exclaimed against with great fury. On the floor of Congress last winter, severe strictures were urged in regard to the circulars in behalf of the Indians; as if benevolent men in this country have not a right to use all the consti

tutional measures in their power to promote their objects. The outcry is precisely similar to that raised in England, where, on the eve of our Revolution, meetings became frequent and full for the redress of our grievances, and spirited circulars were issued throughout the colonies. We are indeed degraded, if we will be kept back from our privilege and duty of petitioning, by the clamors or sneers, either public or private, which in a good cause we ought to be forward to encounter.

An unwillingness to memorialize, when the business is not too inconsiderable to be noticed, ought never to be felt or manifested in the Republic. Yet every one knows the apathy which has existed, and the extreme difficulty with which anything like a general expression of the public feeling can be obtained. There is also a disposition to relax, after the first effort; an unwillingness to return to the trial; an idea that the movements are useless, which do not at once accomplish their purpose. We will not keep our sinews girded to renew the struggle year after year; as if the subject were not worthy of perseverance, a second attempt can hardly be procured; as if intimidated by ill success, or ashamed of our first ardor, we give up the purpose, creep off in silence, and the cause dies away.

Yet in other respects, we are acknowledged to be enterprising. We have as much industry and steadfastness of purpose as the English. Surely the cause of public morality does not demand less zeal, than the accumulation of public or private wealth. It is not less important to maintain the sanctity of one day in the week, than it is to hoard up riches during the other six. It is not less necessary to keep the public faith and preserve a whole Indian community from annihilation, than it is to dig canals, to build lighthouses, or to vex the sea with our fisheries. Had the patriots of Great Britain, when they set their shoulders to the abolition of the Slave Trade, been so fickle-minded, so half-persuaded, so backward in their efforts, that great work of benevolence had still remained unaccomplished.

This important topic forces another on the mind ;-the criminal neglect of the Indians and their interests, as an object demanding the prayers of Christians. We might speak of this neglect as extending to all the civil interests of the land. If a stranger from another sphere should light upon this globe and enter our churches, he would be apt to imagine that in this part of the universe God has the arrangement only of our religious prosperity, and leaves the political and civil affairs of the country to take care of themselves; or, what would amount to the same, gives us in this department the exclusive jurisdiction. In episcopal churches, the Liturgy has provided supplications for the weal of the realm; a very happy foresight, considering the tendency of all Christian communities to practical political atheism.

Especially is it necessary to humble ourselves in prayer to God, when the nation is on the very brink of a crime, which all might justly fear would bring down some speedy and terrible infliction of the vengeance of Heaven. If men of piety do not feel for the Indians, if Christians desert them at the throne of grace, then may they indeed weep in despair. The truest patriots have ever maintained the deepest sense of dependence upon God. Would Christians now do this in regard to the fate of the Indians, their own feelings would be kept alive, their minds clear, and they would be ready to act with energy. We should no longer see them enter coldly and reluctantly into this subject; they would put to it a strong hand; and in the very striking scriptural expression, come up to the help of the Lord against the mighty.

The prayers of the solitary saint' should always go up for the oppressed; and if ever any human beings needed them, the Indians do now. Defenceless, abandoned, submissive, with what solemnity and pathos do they speak to the people of the United States. Their patience is indeed wonderful. God grant them an unfailing supply of this virtue.

In whatever light we view this bill, it is portentous in its aspect, and pregnant with ruin. But there is one part of its consequences, that should make the Christian deprecate its curse as he would the pestilence; which should add intensity to his prayers that God might utterly avert it. It is the blight with which it would wither the hopes, now so teeming with promise, of the full evangelization of these interesting remnants of the Aborigines. In vain, if we break up their schools, and scatter their churches, and drive them out amidst the wilds and savages beyond the Arkansas, may we hope ever to rebuild the desolations of this rising Zion. Already, the influence of the distractions caused by this bill is felt in the decay of religious anxiety, and we might almost fear, in the departure of God's Spirit. What can be expected, in the very nature of things, from a tumultuous removal to the pathless wilds beyond the Mississippi, even could they exist there a few years, surrounded by murderous hordes, but a rapid retrograde march in civilization, and a relapse, as to all piety, into worse than the savageness of past centuries. If we uproot them now, we uproot at the same time every plant of morality and piety which the dews of heaven have cherished, and render it impossible, to all human appearance, ever again to behold their fruits. It is perfectly vain to imagine, that if we start them off towards the Pacific, a single one of their improvements would ever arrive with them to abide at their destination. Hopeless, miserable, abandoned, what heart could they have to put themselves again to the work of building up the institutions, which a Christian people had laid waste, and which, if again erected, would in all probability be ere long overwhelmed again, and swept down, by the rushing tide of a republi