IMPRISONED MISSIONARIES,

'How it strikes a stranger.'

The Canada Watchman, a paper published in the Dominions says:

On the last page of this paper will be found extracts referring to the conduct of the State of Georgia towards the Christian Missionaries lately resident among the Cherokee Indians. Such conduct would be unexpected and anomalous in the Autocrat of Russia; but is precisely what we should anticipate from the Grand Turk, if 'Christian dogs' should incur his jealousy by teaching his subjects the holy doctrines of Christianity and the arts of civilized life. But what are the facts? The Mussalman permits both the English and American Missionaries to traverse every part of his territories, unmolested by his guards and officers, while their aim and labors are directly towards the extinction of the religion of his ancestors, and withstanding his vassals from the faith he himself acknowledges. In the other case the persons rudely bound and imprisoned are Americans by birth, and have an unalienable right to all the privileges of citizens in every one of the states. They were not convicted, they were not even accused of crime, yet they have been incarcerated for months, with felons, vagabonds and thieves. The sole object was the temporal, and future happiness of a tribe who were, a few years ago, rude and savage barbarians; but who through the benign influence of Christianity; had attained such a measure of improvement as not to be inferior in acquirements to many of their haughty, overbearing, avaricious neighbors. They were the immemorial occupiers and proprietors of the soil, by a title justly superior to that of the American government, which the latter had acknowledged by solemn treaty. They were well pleased and delighted to have the missionaries reside among and instruct them; and their right and privilege to permit this could not in justice be questioned by any earthly power. Moreover the missionaries settled among the Aborigines with the express approbation of a former President of the United States, though now that functionary abets and connives at the usurpations, cruelties, --injustice of the state of Georgia. The latter seems about to eject by force the peaceable and rightful land owners it has long tried to drive out by coercive and partial legislation, and to dispose of their land by lottery, thereby clearly proving that it does not need the lands and is incited to such desperate oppression by a rapacious cupidity scarcely to be paralleled. If there is a power which 'renders all their dues' according to the measure of their knowledge and abilities improved or abused, will not those who have done this thing suffer in comparison with dealers in violence and blood during the darkness of the middle ages?