been declared necessary, on these grounds, to push them out of the settled territories, and every means has been used to compel them to abandon the lands of their ancestors, and to seek a fresh country in the wilds beyond the Mississippi. Even so respectable an author as Malte Brun has, in Europe, advanced a doctrine in defence of this sweeping system of Indian expatriation. "Even admitting that the use of ardent spirits has deteriorated their habits and thinned their numbers, we cannot suppose that the Indian population was ever more than twice as dense as at present, or that it exceeded one person for each square mile of surface. Now, in highly civilized countries, like France and England, the population is at the rate of 150 or 200 persons to the square mile. It may safely be affirmed, therefore, that the same extent of land from which one Indian family derives a precarious and wretched subsistence, would support 150 families of civilized men, in plenty and comfort. But most of the Indian tribes raise melons, beans, and maize; and were we to take the case of a people who lived entirely by hunting, the disproportion would be still greater. If God created the earth for the sustenance of mankind, this single consideration decides the question as to the sacred-ess of the Indians' title to the lands which they roam over, but do not, in any reasonable sense, occupy."—v. 224.
A more abominable doctrine surely never was broached. It breathes the genuine spirit of the old Spaniard; and, if acted upon, would produce an everlasting confusion. Every nation which is more densely populated than another, may, on this principle, say to that less densely peopled state, you are not as thickly
