Lancaster gazette. [volume] (Lancaster, Mass.) 1828-1830, 1829-11-17

our turnpike roads, &hether they receive
any ill treatnent. Fe have legislature
and Judiciary andfhe judges Of our SUI
Ipreme court are very rigid in Furnishing
immortality. We have herds Of cattle,
FARMS and houses, mills and looms, cloth
ing and furniture. We are not rich; but
we contriye by our industry to provide
against hunger and nakedness; and to
lay up something comfortable for winter.
Besides these things we have schools and
places of publick worship. Judge We
whether we are such sort of people as
the writer's on the laws of nations had in
their minds. when they talked Of Migrants,
hunters, and sayages." M
To this the Georgians rejoin. " But
you had no business to betake yourselves
to an agricultural life. 1t is downright
imposition upon us. This is the very
thing that we complain Of The more you
work on land the more unwilling you are
to leave it. Just so it is with your schools /;
they only serve to attach you the more
strongly to your country. 1t is all design
ed to keep us, the people of sovereign
and independent State, from the enjoy
nent Of our just rights. We must refer
you to the law Of nations again, which de-
clares that populous countries, whose in
habitants live by agriculture, have right
to take the land of hunters and apply
them to better use.
In answer to this legal argument the
Cherokees have only to say that, even if
Vattel had the power, by flourish of his
pen, to dispossess nation of its patrimo-
NAL inheritance, the present case does
not come within the limits which he has
prescribed. Georgia is not popuous.
She has many millions of acres of unoc-
cupied land. The Cherokees are not an
erratick people," to use the phrase of
Vattel, so that neither part of the case an
swers to the description.
When Georgia shall have hundred
souls to the square mile (and her soil is
capable Of sustaining a larger number
than that) the Cherokees may have four
times as many to the square mile as Geor-
gia now contains.
If any one has the curiosity to read
what Vattel has said on this su beet, he
will find it in sections 81 and 200, where
he will also find commentator of the
manner in which the Puritan settlers of
New-England, and the great founder of
Pennsylvania, obtained possession of the
lands of the natives, viz. by the con-
sent of the occupants, and not by a reli-
ance on the charters Of kings.
Thus stands the case on the law of ma
tons; and if Vaitel were admitted as abb
solute authority, and the Cherokees were
left to their naked right, undefended by
any compact, either with Georgia or the
United States, they would have nothing to
fear. No respectable lawyer, unless ne
is entirely deranged in his intellect, as
consequence of violent party feelings, will
say that the doctrine of Vattel would take
the lands of the Cherokees and give
them to Georgia.
But it is added that the Cherokees are
in the chartered limits of Georgia; and it
is triumphantly asked, 6 Cannot Georgia
govern her own territory ! Is she not en-
titled to her own property p But this
statement of the case is mere begging
of the question. 1t is not admitted that
the Cherokees are now, or ever were, in
the State of Georgia, in any such sense as
is implied by the confident tone of these
questions. They have never acknowledge
ed themselves to be in the State of Geor-
gia. The laws of the United States, and
the 18th article of the treaty of Holston,
declare that Indian territory is not with
in the jurisdiction of any State, nor within
the jurisdiction of any territorial district
Of the United States. 1t seems, however,
that our national statute-book is of very
light authority, when compared with the
supposed conclusions of philosophical
writer, whose theories are produced as the
arbiters of peoples destiny.
Let me ask here, whence did the Sec
rotary of War derive the powe. of repeal-
ing an act of Congress ? This is PLAIN
question; and the people Of the United
States would like to receive a plain an
swer ! Whence did he derive the pow
er to set aside existing treaties The
treaties and the laws are positive and Pc
remptory in declaring that the Cherokees
are not under the Jurisdiction Of Georgia,
nor of any other State, nor Of the United
States; that citizens of the United States
have no right to enter the Indian country.
except in accordance with treaty stlpula-
tons that it is high misdemeanor, pun
-ishable by fine and Imprisonment, for any
such citizens 10 attempt to survey Indian
lands, or to mark trees upon them; and
that the Indian title cannot be extlngulsh-
ed, except by the consent of the Indians,
expressed by regular treaty. Yet the Sec
rotary of War seems never to have known
that any such laws or treaties are in exist |
ence. Is he not aware of all this or
does he really think he has power to annul
treaties and repeal laws. according to MS
sense of convenience and proprIety