105 



the mail of legal enactments and public opinion 

 were not sufficiently binding", instead of depending 

 for a character on the uprightness and integrity of 

 its acts, Government is for ever making- pledges 

 and promises, which the very necessities of numerous 

 societies in various and progressive stages of 

 development, render it impossible for it to keep. 

 Successive Governments, consequently, while con- 

 tinually breaking the pledges of their predecessors, 

 are as actively engaged in forging fresh chains for 

 their successors to wear, and in their turn to burst ; 

 and it is thus that gradually, but steadily, has been 

 accumulated a solid basis for that idea, now fixed, 

 of the bad faith of the English race. 



In the present case we have two races brought 

 into collision as competitors for rights of property 

 and other rights in the soil, the one we may say in 

 the first or lowest, and the other in the last or 

 highest stage of development; and both, as might 

 be expected, imbued with the most opposite views 

 of justice, rights of property, and their own inte- 

 rests. The situation is, in this particular, peculiar, 

 and calls therefore for the most careful consi- 

 deration, lest, by adopting a process of trans- 

 mutation too much in accordance with the ideas 

 which regulate the views of the one party, violence 

 be done to the feelings of the other or by a blind 

 and indiscriminate regard for traditionary rights, the 

 true functions of a Government be abandoned, and 

 the progress of the country be materially retarded. 



