Many of the treaties were kept by the whites and broken by the
Indians; others were broken by the whites themselves; and sometimes
those who broke them did very wrong indeed, and sometimes they did
right. No treaties, whether between civilized nations or not, can ever
be regarded as binding in perpetuity; with changing conditions,
circumstances may arise which render it not only expedient, but
imperative and honorable, to abrogate them.
Necessity of the Conquest.
Whether the whites won the land by treaty, by armed conquest, or, as was
actually the case, by a mixture of both, mattered comparatively little
so long as the land was won. It was all-important that it should be won,
for the benefit of civilization and in the interests of mankind. It is
indeed a warped, perverse, and silly morality which would forbid a
course of conquest that has turned whole continents into the seats of
mighty and flourishing civilized nations. All men of sane and wholesome
thought must dismiss with impatient contempt the plea that these
continents should be reserved for the use of scattered savage tribes,
whose life was but a few degrees less meaningless, squalid, and
ferocious than that of the wild beasts with whom they held joint
ownership.
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