.MTA2NA.NzIzNDk

If this writer believes in the sacred volume; (as we hope and have no reason to doubt he does), the red men of America descended from the same common stock with the civilized communities of Europe, and was, equally, part of the fruit of obedience to the divine command issued to our first parents. They may have been, for aught we know, descendants from the agriculturalist Cain, against whom, we have seen, it was denounced that he should be a fugitive and vagabond in the earth. But if they were, there was no authority to destroy them, for it is written, "whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken upon him, sevenfold.: or they may have been, as they have been conjectured to have been, descendants from the lost tribes of Israel. But whoever they were, and however they may have found their way to to this continent, here they were, heaven directed, in this land, the gift of the Great Spirit, members of the human family, and having the same common origin with ourselves; and here they were, obeying in their turn, the same divine command, to increase and multiply and replenish the earth. In the southern part of this hemisphere, they were, if we may believe the Spanish writers, almost as numerous as the leaves in their forests, and had made considerable progress in the arts of life, as the splendid architectural monuments of Mexico attested. Where was the warrant from heaven to destroy them> It would surely be most preposterous to derive it from the command to increase and multiply and replenish the earth. The government author has therefore manifestly failed in his attempt to sustain his position by this text. The author follows up this unfortunately quoted text, by a reference to Vattel and others, by whom he tells us that he will hereafter (in the course of the essay) sustain the claims of the agriculturalist over those of these nomadic tribes. We shall attend to these authorities when they recur in the subsequent part of the essay, as we shall to the general practical reasoning which he connects with them. At present, we deem it the most perspicuous mode of investigation to follow his positions and authorities in the order of their chronology. Having