whose place it is to direct the way in which crimes (committed, of
course, in the city) shall be ferreted out, or their authors tracked,
usually confides in his own staff to promote these desirable purposes,
from the fact of their accountability to him being well defined, whereas
the county constable yields no obedience to him.




HIS CHARACTER, MORAL AND GENERAL.


It is often claimed for the Indian that, before the white man put him in
the way of a freer indulgence of his unhappy craving for drink, he was
as moral a being as one unrenewed by Divine grace could be expected to
be. Unfortunately, this statement involves no definition of what might be
considered moral, under the circumstances. Now, there will be disagreeing
estimates of what a moral character, upon which there has been no
descent of heavenly grace, or where grace has not supervened to essay its
recreation, or its moulding anew, should be; and there will also, I think,
be divergent views as to a code of morals to be practised which shall
comport with the exhibition of a _reasonably_ seemly morality. I
cannot, at least, concur in that definition of a moral character, upon
which no operation of Divine grace has been expended, for its raising or
its beautifying, which accepts that of the pagan Indian as its highest
expression; and, distinctly, hesitate to affirm that a high moral instinct
inheres in the Indian, or that such is permitted to dominate his mind;
and, when I find one of these very writers who claim for him a high
inborn morality, discovering in him such indwelling monsters as revenge,
mercilessness, implacability, the affirmation falters not the less upon