Republican Herald

FOR THE HERALD

It is really amusing to observe the sympathy manifested by certain opposition papers for the Southern Indians, but in this sympathy may be discovered the same spirit, which, in the late war between this country and Great Britain, thought it unbecoming a religious people to rejoice at our naval victories. It might be supposed by the tone of these papers, that the Indians were compelled to remove, nolens volens, and that unless they immediately packed up the contents of their wigwams and started they would be visited by all the scourges of "war, pestilence and famine."

Has Congress passed a compulsory act which requires the Indians to remove at all events? No, and nothing is required of them but what is required of all white men, viz. an implicit obedience to the laws of the state, in which they reside. Would it be judicious to suffer a sovereign independent nation to exercise its functions within the limits of any state in this Union? If it would be judicious to admit savages, it certainly would be no less so to admit civilized nations to the same immunities, and the mischief would end in the subversion of our liberties and the establishment of despotism upon its ruins. Would it comport with good policy, with the interest and security of this State, to have our Charlestown Indians enjoying complete sovereignty, although they have been disciplined for more than a century in the school of civilization? No man, I believe, would envy him whose habitation is located in the vicinity of these Indians, should they be let loose from the restraints of our laws. If then it would be an act of temerity to permit the Indians in Rhode-Island, who are few in number, to be amenable to their own tribunals alone, must not the consequences be far more dangerous in Georgia, where the Indians are far more numerous, and where the means of keeping them in subjection are far more difficult to obtain? Let the Southern Indians submit to the laws of the State where they reside, and they may "sit under their own vines and fig trees, and no one to make them afraid."

SHILONI.