division and war in the earlier ages. Nor would time and higher degrees
of civilization prevent such consequences, or prove a sufficient remedy
against domestic discord and trouble. Ambition, tyranny, factions and
commotions of various kinds, in larger societies, would occasion
emigrations, and all the arts of navigation would be employed for the
relief and assistance of the distressed. So that if America was found
peopled in some measure nigh 5,500 years after the creation, it cannot be
deemed a thing more wonderful and unaccountable, than the population of
many eastern islands, especially those lying at a considerable distance
from the continents. The great Author of nature, who first framed the
world, still superintends and governs it; and as all things visible and
invisible are instruments in his hand, he can make them all conspire
towards promoting the designs of his providence, and has innumerable
methods, incomprehensible by us, of diffusing the knowledge of his name,
and the glory of his kingdom, throughout the spacious universe.

[Sidenote] The natural proprietors of the country.

Those scattered tribes of savages dispersed by Providence through the
American continent, occupied its extensive forests; and it must be
confessed, that no inhabitants of Europe, Africa or Asia could produce a
better title to their possessions. Their right was founded in nature and
Providence: it was the free and liberal gift of heaven to them, which no
foreigner could claim any pretension to invade. Their lands they held by
the first of all tenures, that of defending them with their lives.
However, charters were granted to European intruders, from kings who
claimed them on the foot of prior discovery; but neither the sovereigns
who granted away those lands, nor the patentees who accepted their
grants, and by fraud or force acquired possession, could plead any title
to them founded on natural right. Prior discovery might give foreigners a