ease and elegance? shall he doom an immense region of the
globe to perpetual desolation, and to hear the howlings of the
tiger and the wolf silence forever the voice of human gladness?
Shall the fields and the valleys, which a beneficent God has
formed to teem with the life of innumerable multitudes, be
condemned to everlasting barrenness? Shall the mighty rivers,
poured out by the hand of nature, as channels of
communication between numerous nations, roll their waters in
sullen silence and eternal solitude of the deep? Have hundreds
of commodious harbors, a thousand leagues of coast, and a
boundless ocean, been spread in the front of this land, and shall
every purpose of utility to which they could apply be prohibited
by the tenant of the woods? No, generous philanthropists!
Heaven has not been thus inconsistent in the works of its
hands. Heaven has not thus placed at irreconcilable strife its
moral laws with its physical creation. The Pilgrims of
Plymouth obtained their right of possession to the territory on
which they settled, by titles as fair and unequivocal as any
human property can be held. By their voluntary association
they recognized their allegiance to the government of Britain,
and in process of time received whatever powers and
authorities could be conferred upon them by a charter from
their sovereign. The spot on which they fixed had belonged to
an Indian tribe, totally extirpated by that devouring pestilence
which had swept the country shortly before their arrival. The
territory, thus free from all exclusive possession, they might
have taken by the natural right of occupancy. Desirous,
however, of giving amply satisfaction to every pretence of
prior right, by formal and solemn conventions with the chiefs
of the neighboring tribes, they acquired the further security of a