the Department of the Interior; for having shown that the public business is done more economically, more efficiently, and more honestly by officials whose appointment and promotion depend solely upon their merit and competency,—thus demonstrating the necessity and practicability of extending the same principle to the entire civil service.
We thank him for having done more than any of his predecessors for the advancement of the Indians in education and civilization, and for the improvement of their relations with the white men and with the Government.
We thank him for having called the attention of our legislators—indifferent even after they were informed—to the outrages inflicted upon the Indians in the name and by the agents of a free people; and we congratulate him that a measure of justice has been meted out to the unfortunate Ponca tribe. That sentiment of sympathy for the oppressed, and of resistance to oppression, which always stirs the blood of Massachusetts, has at last awakened the conscience of this community; and, in the sudden and honest and indignant expression of that sentiment, grave injustice, as we believe, has been done to the man who, overlooking the whole field, and oppressed with the load of official responsibility, has been considering for months and years a problem of astounding difficulty, with a view to its solution on principles of justice and safety for the Indians. And now that a tardy act of reparation
