Excessive Government [pp. 433-437]

EXCESSIVE GO VERNMENT.
The present Superintendent of Ore gon is a very fair man, really interested
in the welfare of the Indians, and has
done a good deal to secure peace with
the treacherous and murderous Snakes,
and other southern tribes. Of the whole
number of Indians in all Oregon, few are
what might be called hostile; though
were it not for the government annuities, undoubtedly many would take to
cattle-stealing, and other depredations,
for a living.
Not to pity them, is hardly humane.
From having once peopled the whole
country, they would make now only a
respectable sized country town. Some
of their own remarks upon their present
condition are full of pathos and power.
Said one, to a gentlemen of my acquaintance, "We are like this wild crab-appletree, and you are like the grafts. Soon,
there will be only cultivated fruit on this
wild stock: it will cease to bear native
fruit."
In the Willamette Valley lives an old
Indian, named McKay-a man of good
native intelligence, and as much inde
pendence as an Indian ever has. He
has, so far, avoided going on the reser vation, and desires, above every thing,
to have a piece of land of his own, out side of that. But he cannot pre-empt
on the soil where he was born; and to
buy'he is not able. He begs some of
his White friends to intercede for him
with the State or General Government,
for a little farm for himself, and to help
him send his children to school. So
far, however, he has been unsuccessful,
and is likely to die, as did the father of
Buffalo Goad, "an old man, in a blanket," so far as the privileges of civilization are concerned: for the present system allows him to be neither an Indian
nor a White Man, as to privileges.
Is it not possible to unite these people
under a territorial organization? Would
it cost the Government any more to nationalize the Indians, than to keep them
upon poor reservations, in different parts
of the State, feeding and clothing them
just enough to perpetuate their habits of
hopeless dependence on the Government?
EXCESSIVE GOVERNMENT.
ONTESQUIEU wrote, "Hap py is that people whose annals
are written in sand." He might have
suggested a happier people, whose laws
are not statutes, but an enlightened public conscience. The theory that written
laws are of public advantage, will, doubtless, not be controverted; but that a limit should be assigned to the number of
those laws, by the public acceptance of
some underlying principles, is a consummation devoutly to be wished. We have
adopted the error of the physician who
undertook to enumerate the articles that
his convalescent patient might not eat.
We adopt the policy of the Old Testa
ment, with its multitude of prohibitory
laws, rather than that of the New, with
its positive injunction of the golden rule,
which comprehends the whole decalogue
and a thousand times more. The policy
of the age is to expend its ingenuity in
making the written code of laws every
thing, and the men who execute them
nothing but mere machines. The genius of other days was employed in making men; it is now exhausted in making
laws. We applaud the ambitious legislator who enacts the most laws, and thus
hatch a thousand would-be statesmen,
who rush to the capitol, bristling with
bills for enactment into pestiferous stat
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