vestments of capital. The sage politician sees visions of conquering navies and replenished armories; of effective canals by which wealth and prosperity might be made to circulate through all the regions of this wide-spreading empire; of impregnable fortresses whose guns and battlements might frown defiance to hostile invasion, upon every promontory, from Florida to Maine.

It has been shrewdly discovered that charity begins at home, and they, who, to say the least of them, were never more sharpsighted than their neighbours in looking for scenes of human woe, have announced, that it is from the beseeching objects of unheeded wretchedness, that throng our own streets and besiege our own doors, we are turning away the streams of our benevolence to be wasted in foreign lands. When all the poor of our own country shall be well fed and clothed and instructed; when every neighbourhood shall be completely supplied with schools and churches; when there shall be no more suffering to be alleviated, nor ignorance to be instructed, nor sinners to be converted, then we are assured it will be time enough to look abroad in quest of objects for our surplus munificence.

Standing as I do before the members of a Missionary Society, who are chiefly known to the public for the part they have shared, as members of another association, in those unexampled sufferings and successes in the cause of Christian philanthropy which the religious world has been admiring for more than half a century, it might be thought indecorous, and it would surely be unnecessary, for me to speak of the victorious comparison they might sustain, with any other set of men under heaven, in those home charities which the enemies of Missions seem disposed to arrogate the exclusive honours. They may safely appear in vindication of their claims, to the improvement in public morals, which their labours have achieved; to "the solitary places made glad for them, and the deserts made to rejoice and blossom as the rose." Or if these should withhold their testimony, and the stones should not utter a justifying and an approving voice, "their witness is in heaven and their record on high," and they will cheerfully wait for the great day of eternity to reveal, before the assembled families of the earth, the strength and the worth of that charity which published a free salvation in their populous dwelling places, and bore its gracious messages into the wilderness along with the earliest footsteps of the most adventurous emigration; which through all that was hazardous in the most disastrous climates, and all that was repulsive in the most loathsome forms of depravity, wherever a sinner could be found, brought to his relief, a man of sympathy and of prayer.

In such a comparison, sir, I am confident, your Society would have nothing to fear. Others too, might come in for their share of approbation, and I am far from believing that hostility to Missions always springs from a pernicious spirit, or an unfeeling VOL. VII.

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heart, although I have yet to learn that it is infallibly auspicious of the opposite dispositions. It is quite a possible case, that the man who shuts his ears to the Macedonian cry of perishing heathens abroad, may yet be unable to resist the vociferous importunity of rags and wretchedness before his eyes, and charity demands that this solicitude for the temporal comfort of his species should be taken, as far as it will go, in offset against his stupid indifference to the salvation of their souls. For me, I would rejoice to see these proofs of good nature and good feeling multiplied more and more, till the last of my doubts and the last of my prejudices were removed. O, I would gladly follow these disciples of a new Christianity, who transpose the terms of an Apostolic injunction, and walk by sight and not by faith, to the scenes of their brightest display; to sick men's beds where they administer relief; to the Negro's cabin, where they pour instruction into his darkened soul, and guide his untutored prayers to a throne of mercy; or to where the beams of approving Heaven smile upon the lovely proportions of some hallowed asylum which gives shelter to the orphan beneficiaries of their compassion or their piety. Upon these honourable exhibitions of manly sympathy and Christian charity, would I found the most delightful anticipations. In such an auspicious moment, when his hands were engaged in a work of righteousness and tender mercy held all the keys of his soul, I would not fear to approach the deadliest foe of Missions upon a Missionary errand. I would spread before him the claims of so Godlike a charity, that its Missionary aspect should be forgotten altogether in its benevolent object. To his head and his heart, I would address such a message as should kindle into so bright a flame, his love of mercy, that upon it, as a holy altar, his hatred to Missions should be wholly consumed. In a word, I would present to his justice and his generosity, the object of your high solicitude, the Creek Indian Mission, which associates, in its character, whatever should ally to its interests, the humanity, the patriotism and the piety of those who hear me.

I hope it will not be thought, the remarks in which I have indulged upon the general question of Missions, are foreign from the particular subject of this day's deliberations. I know that, if a verdict of extravagance and folly, were found upon that grand system of universal benevolence, your society must come in for such share of guilt and contempt as belongs to an accessary. I hasten, however, to the special object of your attention, and will endeavour to atone by the brevity of my conclusion, for any departure from what may be deemed the legitimate sphere of my observations.

Our forefathers, together with a rich inheritance of moral and political advantages, have left to our sympathies and our piety, the two-fold charge of an exotic population, unrighteously introduced amongst us, whose existence is the worst foe to our prosperity,

and whose rapid multiplication looks, with a threatening aspect, upon the perpetuity of our happy institutions; and of a native population, the ancient and rightful proprietors of the soil we cultivate, who, from their earliest intercourse with the European race, have been hastening to destruction with a swift and uninterrupted tendency. For the former class of persons, humanity has already done much, and is still active in their behalf. In many instances, they enjoy all the necessaries and many of the conveniences of life. Religion freely admits them to her churches, her instructions, and her sacraments; and we may confidently hope that as experience shall gradually remove those prejudices which still unfortunately exist, their condition will receive all that improvement which is compatible with the general welfare.

For the Aborigines of our country, little has been done and little attempted. Their sufferings, their wrongs and their mournful fate, are without a parallel in the history of man. Brave and independent, their Creator planted them in this fair continent.Their dominion spread abroad on every hand, and their right was undisputed. The hills and valleys, the beaten shores and the mountain torrents, were all their own, and the unfettered breezes which shook the foliage of their wild forests, were not more free than the valiant huntsman who reposed beneath their shade. Unbidden and unauthorized, our ancestors came to their peaceful home. By contract or by force, by the baubles of traffic or the sword of war, they got possession of their lands. They poured into their unsuspecting bosoms all the contaminating vices of civilized life, unaccompanied by a single safeguard or one redeeming principle, which education and religion have invented to counteract their destructive influences. At their approach, the Indian population melted away like the snow upon their own mountains, before the zephyrs of spring. From the shores of the Atlantic, where they pursued the chase and marshalled the hosts of battle, they have fled successively, for protection to the Alleghany mountains, to the Ohio and the Mississippi. At the present day only a humble remnant is left upon earth. Still in their wonted attitude of plight and of suffering, and still pursued by relentless persecution, they are slowly passing on to where another wave of civilization from the remotest west, may ere long, check their progress, and dash them back upon the wave they are vainly attempting to escape, till the buffeted wreck of this magnanimous people shall be swallowed up for ever.

I love to contemplate the bright pages of my country's history. I dwell with rapture upon the rich scenes of her prosperity; her rapid growth in arts and in power; the intelligence of her citizens; the uprightness of her general policy and the wisdom of her institutions, which have lifted up the rights and the dignity of man from being lorded over and trodden under foot by hereditary pride, to their legitimate place of security and dominion. I re

joice too at the trophies our heroes have won in the fields of righteous combat, although the blood and bereavements by which they were achieved, throw over the contemplation, the hue of a sable melancholy. But when I think of the poor Indians; of their violated rights and unmerited sufferings; how they came to be considered intruders and foreigners in the land which God had given them for their dwelling place; and when they were driven from their beloved homes and the burying grounds of their fathers, into the distant wilderness, the rapacity of white men pursued them there; and because they were unwilling to share this last refuge of their calamities with their unfeeling invaders, they were held to be aggressors, and slaughtering armies were sent amongst them which burnt up their scanty food and their simple habitations, and turned out their women and children into the cold winter storm; aye--and helpless and innocent as they were-murdered them all with exterminating cruelty. Oh! my heart sickens within me at such recollections, and I tremble at the thought of a day of retribution which is appointed for nations as well as individuals.

And what, let me ask, are the sentiments cherished towards the solitary families of red men who still linger on the earth, by the ten millions of people who have turned their forests into corn fields, and built cities on their graves! Is it a feeling of resentment, because they have proved faithless in peace and ferocious in war? Surely it is too soon to have forgotten the provocations which goaded them on to madness and revenge. If they negociated with our public authorities, they were met by a grasping policy which swept away their possessions, a province at a time. If they traded with private individuals, their skins and furs, the fruit of their hard toils, were obtained in exchange for worthless trinkets and devouring luxuries. If they dwelt in our neighbourhood, wasting corruptions overspread their land. If they fled from our contaminating intercourse, avarice and oppression hunted out their retreats. In peace and in war, the causes of their ruin were always at work, and a gloomy anticipation of coming destruction was for ever pressing upon their hearts. From us they had learned nothing but craft and perfidy. With the sanctity of treaties their unenlightened souls were unacquainted, but the God of nature led them to feel, and it is not strange that the bravest of them sometimes burst away from the lethargy of intoxication and despair, and poured upon their oppressors, a torrent of desolating fury.

But I am aware, that since the Indians have ceased to be the objects of terror, they are no longer the objects of resentment. Another sentiment, less guilty, but not less dangerous, has taken place of the spirit of vengeance; an infidel discouragement which represses hope and paralyzes exertion. A persuasion is abroad amongst us, that the fatal decree has already gone forth against

this devoted people; that the elements of a nature, so incorrigibly savage, are deposited in their bosoms, as bids defiance to the meliorating influences of civilization, and we seem to be waiting, in gloomy expectancy, for the day of their doom. And if these doctrines had their foundations in truth and in experience, what would be the inference? That we should remain the inactive spectators of their sad catastrophe? No: We should fly the more speedily to their relief, and strew the flowers of celestial hope along the dreary pathway of their approaching ruin. We should call upon our country to atone, while atonement was possible, for the wrongs she has inflicted; interpose all the resources of her power and her policy, to throw the opposing dykes of her wisdom and benevolence, before the desolating torrent, which is sweeping away an injured race to where they will unite their accusing voice with those who have gone before, in calling down the vengeance of Heaven upon our encroachments and oppressions. We should cry to the slumbering church to put her mightiest energies in requisition; to hasten, whilst haste might be availing, to snatch, at least, a few brands from this devouring burning; to quench the conflagration of sin, with the waters of salvation; to pour through the scorched fragments the life giving sap of the Gospel, and plant them as trees of righteousness in the vineyard of God, where, for a season, they might bring forth the fruits of holiness, a late but cheering testimonial of the penitence of earth, and delightful foretaste of the unrevealed blessedness of Heaven.

But this despair of which I have spoken is gratuitous altogether, condemned by the faith of a Christian and the reason of a man. From the failure of some former attempts to improve the condition of the Aborigines, it would be folly and injustice to infer, that the efforts of the present day will prove like unsuccessful. We are not making over again an experiment that has already failed. We are not resting upon principles, long since exploded; nor seeking to ingraft the refinements of civilization upon a savage nature, which uniformly recoils from their approach. We introduce a process which is to change that nature and implant new principles. Our reliance is not upon a power which has often been defeated, but which has always been victorious; even that same power of the Gospel which converted the brutish Goths who plundered the Capitol, into the polished Italian who built the church of St. Peter; that power which turned the savage inhabitants of ancient Britain, who enslaved and sold their countrymen, in clannish broils, at home, or murdered them in gladiatorial shows abroad, into the NEWTONS, the HOWARDS, the WILBERFORCES, the WESLEYS, and the CAREYS of modern England.The Gospel gives us in morals, what ARCHIMEDES wanted in mechanics, another world to plant our engines upon, and with this vantage ground we have nothing to fear from the most stubborn coalition of sin and barbarism.