Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

valued infinitely more-a smile of happiness and contentment; and when I beheld their healthy countenances and their robust active frames, I could not help feeling how astonished people in England would be if they could but behold and study a state of human existence in which every item in the long list of artificial luxuries which they had been taught to venerate is utterly unknown, and, if described, would be listened to with calm inoffensive indifference, or with a smile approaching very nearly to the confines of contempt; but the truth is, that between what we term the civilized portion of mankind, and what we call “the savage," there is a moral gulf which neither party can cross, or, in other words, on the subject of happiness they have no ideas with us in common. For instance, if I could have suddenly transported one of the ruddy squaws before me to any of the principal bedrooms in Grosvenor Square, her first feeling on entering the apartment would have been that of suffocation from heat and impure air; but if, gently drawing aside the thick damask curtains of a four-post bed, I had shown her its young aristocratic inmates fast asleep, protected from every breath of air by glass windows, wooden shutters, holland blinds, window curtains, hot bedclothes, and beautiful fringed night-caps,- -as soon as her smiles had subsided, her simple heart would have yearned to return to the clean rocks and pure air of Lake Huron; and so it would have been if I could suddenly have transported any of the young men before me to the narrow, contracted hunting-grounds of any of our English country gentlemen; indeed, an Indian would laugh outright at the very idea of rearing and feeding game for the sake of afterwards shooting it; and the whole system of living, house fed, in gaiters, and drinking port wine, would to his mind appear to be an inferior state of happiness to that which it had pleased "the Great Spirit" to allow him to enjoy.

During the whole evening, and again early the next morning, I was occupied in attending to claims on the consideration of the British Government which were urged by several of the tribes, and in making arrangements with some of our ministers of religion of various sects, who, at their own expense, and at much inconvenience, had come to the island.

At noon I proceeded to a point at which it had been arranged that I should hold a council with the chiefs of all the tribes, who, according to appointment, had congregated to meet me; and on my arrival there I found them all assembled, standing in groups, dressed in their finest costumes, with feathers waving on their heads, with their faces painted, half-painted, quarter-painted, or one eye

painted, according to the customs of their respective tribes, while on the breast and arms of most of the oldest of them there shone resplendent the silver gorgets and armlets which in former years had been given to them by their ally-the British Sovereign.

After a few salutations it was proposed that our Council should commence and accordingly, while I took possession of a chair which the Chief Superintendent of Indian affairs had been good enough to bring for me, the chiefs sat down opposite to me in about eighteen or twenty lines parallel to each other.

For a considerable time we absolutely gazed at each other in dead silence. Passions of all sorts had time to subside; and the judgment, divested of its enemy, was thus enabled calmly to consider and prepare the subjects of the approaching discourse; and, as if still further to facilitate this arrangement, "the pipe of peace" was introduced, slowly lighted, slowly smoked by one chief after another, and then sedately handed me to smoke it too. The whole assemblage having, in this simple manner, been solemnly linked together in a chain of friendship, and as it had been intimated to them by the superintendent that I was ready to consider whatever observations any of them might desire to offer, one of the oldest chiefs arose; and after standing for some seconds erect, yet in a position in which he was evidently perfectly at his ease, he commenced his speech-translated to me by an interpreter at my side-by a slow, calm expression of thanksgiving to the Great Spirit for having safely conducted so many of his race to the point on which they had been requested to assemble. He then, in very appropriate terms, expressed the feelings of attachment which had so long connected the red man with his great parent across the Salt Lake; and after this exordium, which in composition and mode of utterance would have done credit to any legislative assembly in the civilized world, he proceeded, with great calmness, by very beautiful metaphors, and by a narration of facts it was impossible to deny, to explain to me how gradually and-since their acquaintance with their white brethren-how continuously the race of red men had melted, and were still melting, like snow before the sun. As I did not take notes of this speech, or of those of several other chiefs who afterwards addressed the council, I could only very inaccurately repeat them. Besides which, a considerable portion of them related to details of no public imporance: I will therefore, in general terms, only observe, that nothing can be more interesting, or offer to the civilized world a more useful lesson, than the manner in which the red aborigines of America, without ever interrupting each other, conduct their councils.

G

The calm high-bred dignity of their demeanour the scientific manner in which they progressively construct the framework of whatever subject they undertake to explain-the sound arguments by which they connect as well as support it-and the beautiful wild flowers of eloquence with which, as they proceed, they adorn every portion of the moral architecture they are constructing, form altogether an exhibition of grave interest; and yet is it not astonishing to reflect that the orators in these councils are men whose lips and gums are-while they are speaking-black from the wild berries upon which they have been subsisting,-who have never heard of education-never seen a town-but who, born in the secluded recesses of an almost interminable forest, have spent their lives in either following zigzaggedly the game on which they subsist through a labyrinth of trees, or in paddling their canoes across lakes, and among a congregation of such islands as I have described?

They hear more distinctly-see farther-smell clearer-can bear more fatigue-can subsist on less food-and have altogether fewer wants than their white brethren; and yet, while from morning till night we stand gazing at ourselves in the looking-glass of self-admiration, we consider the red Indians of America as "outside barbarians."

But I have quite forgotten to be the Hansard of my own speech at the council, which was an attempt to explain to the tribes assembled the reasons which had induced their late "Great Father" to recommend some of them to sell their lands to the Provincial Government, and to remove to the innumerable islands in the waters before us. I assured them that their titles to their present hunting-grounds remained, and ever would remain, respected and undisputed; but that, inasmuch as their white brethren had an equal right to occupy and cultivate the forest that surrounded them, the consequence inevitably would be to cut off their supply of wild game, as I have already described. In short, I stated the case as fairly as I could, and, after a long debate, succeeded in prevailing upon the tribe to whom I had particularly been addressing myself to dispose of their lands on the terms I had proposed; and whether the bargain was for their weal or woe, it was, and so long as I live will be, a great satisfaction to me to feel that it was openly discussed and agreed to in presence of every Indian tribe with whom her Majesty is allied; for be it always kept in mind, that while the white inhabitants of our North American colonies are the Queen's subjects, the red Indian is by solemn treaty her Majesty's ally.

WILLIAM WHEWELL:

1795-1866.

Invention of the Microscope and the Telescope.

IT has been well observed that about the same time when the invention of the telescope showed us that there might be myriads of other worlds claiming the Creator's care, the invention of the microscope proved to us that there was in our own world myriads of creatures, before unknown, which this care was preserving. While one discovery seemed to remove the Divine providence further from us, the other gave us more striking examples that it was far more active in our neighbourhood than we had supposed; while the first extended the boundaries of God's known kingdom, the second made its known administration more minute and careful.

It appeared that in the leaf and in the bud, in solids and fluids, animals existed hitherto unsuspected;' the apparently dead masses and blank spaces of the world were found to swarm with life. And yet, of the animals thus revealed, all, though unknown to us before, had never been forgotten by Providence. Their structure, their vessels and limbs, their adaptation to their situation, their food and habitations, were regulated in as beautiful and complete a manner as those of the largest and apparently most favoured animals. The smallest insects are as exactly finished, often as gaily ornamented, as the most graceful beasts, or birds of the brightest plumage. And when we seem to go out of the domain of the complex animal structure with which we are familiar, and come to animals of apparently more scanty faculties and less developed powers of enjoyment and action, we still find that their faculties and their senses are in exact harmony with their situation and circumstances; that the wants which they have are provided for, and the powers which they possess called into action. find, therefore, that Divine providence is, in fact, extended over an immense succession of tribes of beings, surpassing what we could have conceived or expected; and thus we may feel secure that the mere multitude of created objects cannot remove us from the government and superintendence of cur Creator.

We

LORD MACAULAY:

1800-1859.

The Trial of the Seven Bishops.

On the 29th of June, Westminster Hall, Old and New Palace Yard, and all the neighbouring streets to a great distance were thronged with people. Such an auditory had never before, and has never since been assembled in the Court of King's Bench. Thirty-five temporal peers of the realm were counted in the crowd.

All the four judges of the court were on the bench. The jury was sworn; it consisted of persons of highly respectable station. The foreman was Sir Roger Langley, a baronet of old and honourable family; with him were joined a knight and ten esquires, several of whom are known to have been men of large possessions. One name excited considerable alarm, that of Michael Arnold. He was brewer to the palace; and it was apprehended that the Government counted on his voice. The story goes that he complained bitterly of the position in which he found himself. "Whatever I do," he said, "I am sure to be half ruined. If I say Not Guilty, I shall brew no more for the king; and if I say Guilty, I shall brew no more for anybody else."

The trial then commenced, a trial which, even when coolly perused after the lapse of more than a century and a half, has all the interest of a drama. The advocates contended on both sides with far more than professional keenness and vehemence; the audience listened with as much anxiety as if the fate of every one of them was to be decided by the verdict; and the turns of fortune were so sudden and amazing that the multitude repeatedly passed in a single minute from anxiety to exultation, and back again from exultation to still deeper anxiety.

The information charged the bishops with having written or published, in the county of Middlesex, a false, malicious, and seditious libel. The attorney and solicitor first tried to prove the writing. For this purpose several persons were called to speak to the hands of the bishops. But the witnesses were so unwilling that hardly a single plain answer could be extracted from any of them.

However, the handwriting was proved. But a new and serious objection was raised. It was not sufficient to prove that the bishops had written the alleged libel. It was necessary to prove

« AnteriorContinuar »