25th.  Mr. Cass has examined, in an able article in the North American Review, the policy of the American government in its treatment of the Indians, in contrast with that of Great Britain.  In this article, the charges of the London Quarterly are controverted, and a full vindication made of our policy and treatment of these tribes, which must be gratifying to every lover of our institutions, and our public sense of justice.  As between government and government, this paper is a powerful and triumphant one.  As a legal question it is not less so.  The question of political sovereignty is clear.  Did our English Elizabeths, James’, and Charles’, ever doubt their full right of sovereignty?  The public sense of justice and benevolence, the Republic, if not the parent monarchy, fully recognized, by tracing to these tribes the fee of the soil, and by punctually paying its value, as established by public treaties, at all times.

26th.  Mr. T.G.  Anderson, of Drummond Island, transmits a translation of the Lord’s Prayer, in Odjibwa, which he requests to be examined.

Feb. 5th.  No State seems comparable, for its enterprise and rapid improvements, to New York.  Mr. E.B.  Allen, who recently removed from this remote village to Ogdensburgh, New York, expresses his agreeable surprise, after seven years’ absence in the West, at the vast improvements that have been made in that State.  “There is a spirit of enterprise and energy, that is deeply interesting to men of business and also men of science.”

March 1st.  Dr. Martyn Paine, of New York, proposes a system of philosophic exchanges.  The large and fine collection of mineralogical and geological specimens which I brought from Missouri and other parts of the Mississippi valley in 1819, appears to have had an effect on the prevalent taste for these subjects, and at least, it has fixed the eyes of naturalists on my position on the frontiers.  Cabinets of minerals have been in vogue for about nine or ten years.  Mr. Maclure, of Philadelphia, Colonel Gibbs, of New Haven, and Drs. De Witt, Bruce and Mitchill, of New York, and above Profs.  Silliman and Cleveland, may be said to have originated the taste.  Before their day, minerals were regarded as mere “stones.”  Now, it is rare to find a college or academy without, at least, the nucleus of a cabinet.  By transferring my collection here, I have increased very much my own means of intellectual enjoyment and resistance to the power of solitariness, if it has not been the means of promoting discovery in others.

* * * * *