Master Joseph laughed again. "Well, something like that. The earth is the Lord's. He has intended it for the use of His children. We are His children quite as much as the savages. Therefore we have as much right to it as they have."
"Only they happen to be in possession," replied Master Raymond, drily.
"Are they in possession? So far as they are actually in possession, I admit their right. But do you seriously mean that a few hundred or thousand of wild heathen, have a right to prior occupancy to the whole North American continent? It seems to me absurd?"
"A relative of mine has ten square miles in Scotland that he never occupies, in your sense of the word any more than your red-men do; and yet he is held to have a valid right to it, against the hundreds of peasants who would like to enter in and take possession."
"Oh, plenty of things are done wrong in the old world," replied Master Putnam; "that is why we Puritans are over here. But still the fact remains that the earth is the Lord's and that He intended it for His children's use; and no merely legal or personal right can be above that. If ever the time comes that your relative's land is really needed by the people at large, why then some way will have to be contrived to get hold of it for them."
"The Putnam family have a good many broad acres too," said Master Raymond, with a smile, looking around him.
"Oh, you cannot scare me," replied his friend, also smiling. "What is sauce for the Campbell goose is sauce for the Putnam gander. If the time ever comes when the public good requires that the broad lands of the Putnams—if there be any Putnams at that time—have to be appropriated to meet the wants of their fellow men, then the broad Putnam lands will have to go like the rest, I imagine. We have taken them from the Indians, just as the Normans took them from the Saxons—and as the Saxons took them from the Danes and the ancient inhabitants—by the strong hand. But the sword can give no right—save as the claim of the public good is behind it. Show me that the public good requires it, and I am willing that the title-deeds for my own share of the broad Putnam lands shall be burnt up tomorrow."
"I believe you, my dear friend," said Master Raymond, gazing with admiration upon the manly, glowing face of this nature's nobleman. "And I am inclined to think that your whole view of the matter is correct. But, coming back to our first point, do you know of any savage that we could trust to guide us safely to the settlements on the Hudson?"
"If old king Philip, whose head has been savagely exposed to all weathers on the gibbet at Plymouth for the last sixteen years, were alive, something perhaps might be done. His safeguard would have carried you through."
"Is there not another chief, called Nucas?"