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will suit the ceremony to our wishes" -then is he indulging in a strain, which, though it may abundantly express his zeal for the honour of the "London Ministers," is scarcely in accordance with those rules of Christian conduct, which every pastor should seek, both to inculcate by precept and to express by example.

CONDUCT OF THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT TOWARDS THE CHEROKEE INDIANS.

Ir is a singular circumstance that we should find the most flagrant violations of the principles of justice and humanity in a government which represents the voice of a free and independent people, of a people whose constitution is based on the supposed inalienable rights of man. Yet so it is. We find, in the Friends' Intelligencer, a periodical published by the quakers, in New York, most lamentable details of the proceedings adopted by the American government towards the Cherokee nation. A " treaty" was entered into with these poor people in the following manner: "A few worthless renegadoes of the tribe were got together by the agents of our philanthropic government, and plied with whiskey, until they consented to affix their marks to a certain document, of the tenor of which they were about as ignorant as the pen with which it was written. This spurious treaty was never assented to by more than one hundred of the eighteen thousand persons composing the tribe, and here is a remonstrance signed by more than fifteen thousand Cherokees denying the validity of the treaty, and yet our government has the iniquitous impudence to pretend that the treaty is binding on the Cherokees, and that in the fulfilment of its articles they must be compelled to remove." The “ monstrance" is a spirited and wellwritten protest against the instrument

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purporting to be a treaty made in December, 1835, at New Echota, by the Rev. John F. Schermerhorn, and certain unauthorized individual Cherokees, as a violation of the fundamental principles of justice, and an outrage on the primary rules of national intercourse. The latter portion contains the following touching, though unavailing appeal to the American government:

"And now, in the presence of your august assemblies, and in the presence of the Supreme Judge of the universe, most solemnly and most humbly do we ask-Are we, for these causes, to be subjected to the indescribable evils which are designed to be inflicted on us ? Is our country to be made the scene of the "horrors" which the Commissioners" will not paint ?” For adhering to the principles on which your great empire is founded, and which have advanced it to its present elevation and glory, are we to be despoiled of all we hold dear on earth? Are we to be hunted through the mountains, like wild beasts, and our women, our children, our aged, our sick, to be dragged from their homes, like culprits, and packed on board loathsome boats, for transportation to a sickly clime?

"Already are we thronged with armed men; forts, camps, and military posts of every grade, already occupy our whole country. With us, it is a season of alarm and apprehension. We acknowledge the power of the United States-we acknowledge our own feebleness. Our only fortress is, the justice of our cause. Our only appeal, on earth, is to your tribunal. To you, then, we look. Before your honorable bodies, we, in view of the appalling circumstances with which we are surrounded-relying on the righteousness of our cause, and the justice and magnanimity of the tribunal to which we appeal-we do solemnly and earnestly protest against that spurious instrument. Our minds remain unaltered. We never can assent to that

compact; nor can we believe that the United States are bound in honor or in justice to execute on us its degrad ing and ruinous provisions.

"It is true, we are a feeble people, and as regards physical power we are in the hands of the United States; but we have not forfeited our rights ; and if we fail to transmit to our sons the freedom we have derived from our fathers, it must not be by an act of suicide-it must not be by our own

consent.

"With trembling solicitude and anxiety, we most humbly and respectfully ask, Will you hear us?

Will you extend to us your powerful protection? Will you shield us from the 'horrors' of the threatening storm? Will you sustain the hopes we have rested on the public faith-the honor, the justice of your mighty empire? We commit our cause to your favour and protection.

"And your memorialists, as in duty bound, will ever pray.

"Cherokee Nation, Feb.22nd, 1838, "Signed by FIFTEEN THOUSAND SIX HUNDRED and SIXTY-FIVE of the Cherokee people; as will appear by referring to the original, submitted to the Senate by the Cherokee Delegation."

The "Friends' Intelligencer" asks "Can it be possible that the people of this country will allow such a wicked tragedy to be consummated? Where is our sense of honour and justice." It appears, however, that the exertions of the Quakers, and other friends of humanity, have procured some short respite in an extension of the time allowed them to emigrate. In the meanwhile, the "treaty of removal is in

very rapid progress of execution, under the superintendance of General Scott. As the Indians had not prepared themselves for the removal, it must be attended with great suffering and privation; and also, with the total loss of the little personal property of which they may be possessed, and which they can neither sell nor carry with them. They are, it ap

pears, 'collected' and marched off in crowds, without any opportunity to make any arrangement for a comfortable journey. It would appear, that by this time, nearly all that portion of the tribe which was in the limits of the States of Georgia, and Tennessee is on the march for Alabama." The Decaten Observer says, "While we saw some drunk, and others playing cards, one middle-aged woman we saw seated alone, on a log, reading the Acts of the Apostles, in Cherokee, with an air of reverential solemnity seldom witnessed."

The Red men are thus fading away before the "accursed lust of gold,' which is the "root of all evil;" for the real reason for thus dispossessing them of their lands is said to be, the discovery of valuable veins of ore in their territory. They are, however, not unwept by woman's tears. Mrs. Sigourney thus pathetically sings the funeral dirge of the race.

"YE say they all have passed away,
That noble race and brave,--
Their light canoes have vanished
From off the crested wave:
That, mid the forests where they roam'd
There rings no hunter's shout;
But their name is on your waters-

Ye may not wash it out.

"Yes, where Ontario's billow

Like Ocean's surge is curl'd,
Where strong Niagara's thunders wake
The echo of the world;
Where red Missouri bringeth

Rich tribute from the West,
And the Rappahannock sweetly sleeps
On green Virginia's breast.

"Ye say their cone-like cabins,

That cluster'd o'er the vale,
Have disappear'd, as wither'd leaves
Before the autumn gale:
But their memory liveth on your hills,
Their baptism on your shore,
Your everlasting rivers speak

Their dialect of yore.

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"Ye see their unresisting tribes,

With toil-worn steps and slow, Onward through trackless deserts press, A caravan of wo.

Think ye the Eternal ear is deaf

His sleepless vision dim ? Think ye the soul's blood may not cry, From that far land, to HIM?"

LORD DURHAM'S REPORT ON CANADIAN RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS.

THE following opinion of Lord Durham, on the vital question of a Church Establishment in the present state of the controversy, is of the highest importance; and certainly must be taken as one long step at least to that most desirable of all political catastrophes, the total separation of Church and State. Lord Durham does not deliver this opinion merely as a private person; but it should be remembered, that he speaks as the representative of the Majesty of the British Crown, the Lord High Commissioner, and alter ego of her most gracious majesty the Queen. Thus it has come to pass, that one representative of the crown returns from the Colonies an avowed partizan of the Voluntary Principle, and another representative, Lord Fortescue, goes to his new viceregal government, with sentiments openly unfavourable to a Protestant Establishment. All this, therefore, seems most certainly to indicate, that the day is approaching, when nominal Protestants must be compelled to renounce one of the most valued jewels stolen from the Papal

tiara.

"The great practical question, however, on which these various parties have for a long time been at issue, and which has within a very few months again become the prominent matter in debate, is that of the clergy reserves. The prompt and satisfactory decision of this question is essential to the pacification of Canada; and as it was one of the most important

questions referred to me for investigation, it is necessary that I should state it fully, and not shrink from making known the light in which it has presented itself to my mind. The disputes on this subject are now of long standing. By the Constitutional Act, a certain portion of the land in every township was set apart for the maintenance of a • Protestant' clergy. In that portion of this Report which treats of the management of the waste lands, the economical mischiefs which have resulted from this appropriation of territory are fully detailed; and the present disputes relate solely to the application, and not to the mode of raising the funds, which are now derived from the sale of the clergy reserves. Under the term 'Protestant clergy,' the clergy of the Church of England have always claimed the sole enjoyment of these funds. The mem

bers of the Church of Scotland have claimed to be put entirely on a level with the Church of England, and have demanded that these funds should be equally divided between both. The various denominations of Protestant Dissenters have asserted that the term includes them, and that out of these funds an equal provision should be made for all Christians who do not belong to the Church of Rome. But a great body of all Protestant denominations, and the numerous Catholics who inhabit the province, have maintained that any such favour towards any one, or even of all the Protestant sects, would be most unadvisable; and have either demanded the equal application of those funds to the purposes of all religious creeds whatsoever, or have urged the propriety of leaving each body of religionists to maintain its own establishment, to repeal or disregard the law, and to apply the clergy funds to the general purposes of the Government, or to the support of a general system of education.

"The supporters of these differen' schemes have long contended in this

province, and greatly inconvenienced the Imperial Government, by constant references to its decision. The Secretary of State for the Colonies proposed to leave the determination of the matter to the provincial legislatures, pledging the Imperial Government to do its utmost to get a parliamentary sanction to whatever course they might adopt. Two bills in consequence passed the last House of Assembly, in which the Reformers had the ascendancy, applying these funds to the purposes of education; and both these bills were rejected by the Legislative Council.

persons, this was the chief predisposing cause of the recent insurrection, and it is an abiding and unabating cause of discontent. Nor is this to be wondered at. The Church of England, in Upper Canada, by numbering in its ranks all those who belong to no other sect, represents itself as being more numerous than any single denomination of Christians in the country. Even admitting, however, the justice of the principle upon which this enumeration proceeds, and giving that Church credit for all that it thus claims, its number could not amount to one-third, probably not a fourth, of the population. It is not, therefore, to be expected that the other sects, three at least of whom-the Methodists, the Presbyterians, and the Catholics-claim to be individually more numerous than the Church of England, should acquiesce quietly in the supremacy thus given it. And it is equally natural that the English Dissenters and Irish Catholics, remembering the position which they occupied at home, and the long and painful struggle through which alone they have obtained the imperfect equality they now possess, should refuse to acquiesce for themselves in the creation of a similar establishment in their new country, and thus to bequeath to their children a strife as arduous and embittered as that from which they have so recently and imperfectly escaped.

"During all this time, however, though much irritation had been caused by the exclusive claims of the Church of England, and the favour shown by the Government to one, and that a small religious community, the clergy of that Church, though an endowed, were not a dominant priesthood. They had a far larger share of the public money than the clergy of any other denomination, but they had no exclusive privileges, and no authority, save such as might spring from the efficient discharge of their sacred duties, or from the energy, ability, or influence of members of their body. But the last public act of Sir John Colborne, before quitting the government of the provinc in 1835, which was the establishment of the fiftyseven rectories, has completely changed the aspect of the question. It is "But for this act, it would have been understood that every rector possesses possible, though highly impolitic, to all the spiritual and other privileges have allowed the clergy reserves to enjoyed by an English rector; and remain upon their former undeterthat though he may have no right to mined and unsatisfactory footing. But levy tithes (for even this has been the question as to the application of made a question), he is in all other this property must now be settled, if respects in precisely the same position it is intended that the province is to as a clergyman of the Established be free from violent and perilous agiChurch in England. This is regarded tation. Indeed, the whole controversy, by all other teachers of religion in the which had been in a great measure country as having at once degraded suspended by insurrection, was in the them to a position of legal inferiority course of the last summer revived to the clergy of the Church of Eng- with more heat than ever by the most land; and it has been resented most inopportune arrival in the colony of warmly. In the opinion of many opinions given by the English law

officers of the Crown in favour of the legality of the establishment of the rectories. Since that period the question has again absorbed public attention; and it is quite clear that it is upon this practical point that issue must sooner or later be joined on all the constitutional questions to which I have previously adverted. I am well aware that there not wanting some who represent the agitation of this question as merely the result of its present unsettled character, and who assert, that if the claims of the English Church, to the exclusive enjoyment of this property, were established by the Imperial Parliament, all parties, however loud their present pretensions, or however vehement their first complaints, would peacefully acquiesce in an arrangement which would then be inevitable. This might be the case if the establishment of some dominant Church were inevitable. But it cannot be necessary to point out that in the immediate vicinity of the United States, and with their example before the people of Canada, no injustice, real or fancied, occasioned and supported by a British rule, would be regarded in this light. The result of any determination on the part of the British Government or Legislature to give one sect a predominance and superiority would be, it might be feared, not to secure the favoured sect, but to endanger the loss of the colony, and, in vindicating the exclusive pretensions of the English Church, to hazard one

of the fairest possessions of the British Crown.

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I am bound, indeed, to state, that there is a degree of feeling, and an unanimity of opinion on the question of ecclesiastical establishments over the northern part of the continent of America, which it will be prudent not to overlook in the settlement of this question. The superiority of what is called the Voluntary Principle,' is a question on which I almost say that there is no difference of opinion in the United States; and it cannot be denied that on this, as on other points, the tone of thought prevalent in the Union has exerted a very considerable influence over the neighbouring provinces.

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"It is most important that this question should be settled, and so settled as to give satisfaction to the majority of the people of the two Canadas, whom it equally concerns; and I know of no mode of doing this, but by repealing all provisions in imperial acts that relate to the application of the clergy reserves, and the funds arising from them, leaving the disposal of the funds to the local legislature, and acquiescing in whatever decision it may adopt. The views which I have expressed on this subject sufficiently mark my conviction, that, without the adoption of such a course, the most mischievous practical cause of dissension will not be removed."

MISCELLANIES.

Popery.-On December 29th, Frederic Lucas, Esq., of the Middle Temple, barrister at law, abjured the tenets of the Quakers, and embraced the Roman Catholic faith. He was baptised according to the rites of the Roman Catholic church, at No. 14, York-place, Baker-street, by the Rev. Father Lythgoe, S. J.

The conversions to the Roman Catholic communion, annually, in England, are computed to be about 2000.

At Marseilles, on the 12th of November last, the body of Saint Exupere, said to have been found in the catacombs at Rome, was sent by the Pope to the central council of the propagation of the faith, at Lyons; as a testimony of his high satisfaction for the services rendered by that society to "the faith." With this body was sent the vase in which the blood of the martyr had been collected [Was the blood in the vase?]; "and all other satisfactory marks which an

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