TREATMENT OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE SPECTATOR.
SIR—Our half countrymen, the Republicans of North America, will have renson to complain of the English press, if Mr. O'Cossretes burning words go over the Atlantic without 3 just accompaniment. Sharing his indignation, and yours at the way in which the Indians are now dealt with in the United States, and especially at the treatment of OSCOLA, the Seminole chief, I appeal to your impartiality on this really important matter. To an extract from the Globe, relative to the new, act of atrocity in the case of this chief oscor.a, mentioned by Mr. O'CONNELL in Exeter Hall, you bays added this remark- " This infamous proceeding is ennsi,tent with the uniform policy of the Americans in their transactions with the poor Indians."
But in stigmatizing in these terms what is out of all measure bad, you have fallen into the eloquent advocate's error of omitting what is doing of unquestions able and extensive excellence in the United States as to the Indians. There is a broad ray of light breaking in that country which we ought to acknowledge, whilst we express our indignation at thesystem which, in common with ours selves in Canada and elsewhere, is destroving the weaker races. In America, an active party desire to reform this system, and the press is busy in correcting the public mind on the whole subject ; and if we in Europe reecho the better voice of the American press, that correction will be hastened. The United States Congress, too, is not quite asleep on the subject. In IS32, two years before we scarcely thought of our blundering Slave Emancipation Act, Congress passed a law admitting delegates from Indian tribes into the Hon.e of Representatives at Washington. When shall we pass such a law for the Hindoo, the Negro, or any Coloured man? or even for the now more enslaved White colonist ? Permit me to mention to you another fact, which shows the existence of an extensively good spirit on this Indian question. A zealous friend of the Coloured race, Mr. DRAKE, a bookseller of Boston, has published a volume of six hum dred (small print) pages in behalf of the Indians ; and six editions of ship" Book of the Indians" are already exhausted. This is one of an hundred like facts. Whilst, then, Mr. O'Cowxer.t gloriously raises his indignant voice against the evil done by the most Westerly Britons, be his studious care and yours to increase the power of their good acts by proclaiming them also.
Am Ease Bettor.
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