of the common mother, amply adequate to the nourishment of millions, be claimed exclusively by a few hundreds of her offspring?  Shall the lordly savage not only disdain the virtues and enjoyments of civilization himself, but shall he control the civilization of a world?  Shall he forbid the wilderness to blossom like a rose?  Shall he forbid the oaks of the forest to fall before the ax of industry, and to rise again, transformed into the habitations of 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 to 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 ample satisfaction to every pretense of prior right, by formal and solemn conventions with the chiefs of the neighboring tribes, they acquired the further security of a purchase.  At their hands the children of the desert had no cause of complaint.  On the great day of retribution, what thousands, what millions of the American race will appear at the bar of judgment to arraign their European invading conquerors!  Let us humbly hope that the fathers of the Plymouth Colony will then appear in the whiteness of innocence.  Let us indulge in the belief that they will not only be free from all accusation of injustice to these unfortunate sons of nature, but that the testimonials of their acts of kindness and benevolence towards them will plead the cause of their virtues, as they are now authenticated by the record of history upon earth.