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of its acts, it is forever making pledges and promises, 

 which the very necessities of numerous societies 

 in various and progressive stages of development, 

 render it impossible to keep. Successive Govern- 

 ments, consequently, while continually 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 opposites views of justice, 

 rights of property, and their own interests. The 

 situation is, in this particular, peculiar, and calls 

 therefore for the most careful consideration, lest, by 

 adopting a process of transmutation 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 Govern- 

 ment be abandoned, and the progress of the country 

 be materially retarded. 



In all other respects, however, it is not new. The 

 student of the history of Property is aware, that a 



