all, existed by our act and not by hers, for her act was consequent upon ours. The most that the president was at liberty to say, without condemning his own government, was, that there had been a collision of the forces of the two republics on a territory claimed by each; but this collision. he had no right to term war, for everybody knows that it takes something more than a collision of their respective forces on a disputed territory to constitute war between two civilized nations. In no possible point of view was the announcement of the president that war existed between the two republics, and existed by the act of Mexico, correct. It did not exist at all; or, if it did, it existed not by act of Mexico, but by our act.. In either case, the official an nouncement was false, and cannot be defended.

The president may have been governed by patriotic motives; he may have felt that prompt and energetic action was required; he may have believed that in great emer gencies the chief magistrate of a powerful republic, having to deal with a weak and distracted state, should rise superior to mere technical forms and the niceties of truth and honor; but it strikes us that he would have done better, proved himself even more patriotic, and sufficiently prompt and energetic, if he had confined himself to the ordinary rules of morality, and the well-defined principles of international law. By aspiring to rise above these, and to appear original, he has placed his country in a false position, and debarred himself, whatever the just causes of war Mexico may have given us, from pleading one of them in justification of the actual war. We must be permitted to regret that he did not reflect beforehand, that, if he placed the defence of the war on the ground that it already existed, and existed by the act of Mexico herself, and on that ground demanded of congress the means of prosecuting it, he would, in case that ground proved to be untenable, as he must have known it would, have nothing whatever to allege in its or his own justification. He should have been lawyer enough to have known that he could not plead anew, after having failed on his first issue. It is often hazardous in our pleadings to plead what is not true, and in doing so in the present case, the president has not only offended morality, which he may regard as a small matter, but has even committed a blunder. The course the president should have pursued is plain and obvious. On learning the state of things on the frontier, the critical condition of

our army of occupation, he should have demanded of congress the reinforcements and supplies necessary to relieve it and secure the purpose for which it was avowedly sent to the Rio Grande; and, if he believed it proper or necessary, to have in addition laid before congress a full and truthful statement of our relations with Mexico, including all the unadjusted complaints, past and present, we had against her, accompanied by the recommendation of a declaration of war. He would then have kept within the limits of his duty, proved himself a plain constitutional president, and left the responsibility of war or no war to congress, the only war-making power known to our laws. Gougress, after mature deliberation, might, or might not, have declared war,-most likely would not; but whether so or not, the responsibility would have rested with it, and no blame would have attached to the president.

Unhappily, this course did not occur to the president, or was too plain and simple to meet his approbation. As if fearful, if congress deliberated, it might refuse to declare war, and as if determined to have war at any rate, he presented to congress, not the true issue, whether war should or should not be declared,-but the false issue, whether congress would grant him the means of prosecuting a war, waged against us by a foreign power. In the true issue, congress might have hesitated; in the one actually presented, there was no room to hesitate, if the officialˇannouncement of the president was to be credited, and hesitation would have been criminal. By declaring that the war already existed, and by the act of Mexico herself, the presi dent relieved congress of the responsibility of the war, by throwing it all on Mexico. But since he cannot fasten it on Mexico, for war did not already exist, or if so, by our act, and not hers, it necessarily recoils upon himself, and he must bear the responsibility of doing what the constitution forbids him to do,-of making war without the intervention of congress. In effect, therefore, he has trampled the constitution under his feet, set a dangerous precedent, and, by the official publication of a palpable falsehood, sullied the national honor. It is with no pleasure that we speak thus of the chief magistrate of the Union, for whose elevation to his high and responsible office we ourselves voted. But whatever may be our attachment to party, or the respect we hold to be due from all good citizens to the civil magistrate, we cannot see the constitution

violated, and the national honor sacrificed, whether by friend or foe, from good motives or bad, without entering, feeble though it be, our stern and indignant protest. The humiliation is deep and painful, and would be insupportable were it not for the earnest patriotism of the people which the war has called forth, and the brilliant achievements of our brave troops in Mexico. These relieve the gloom, and make us still proud to call ourselves an American citizen.*

But passing over this, we have yet to be convinced, whatever were the just causes of complaint we had against Mexico, that the war was called for. We are willing to admit that we had suffered grievous wrongs from Mexico, and that we had shown exemplary forbearance, and treated her with great generosity; but she had shown a willingness to treat with us, and the greater part, if not all, of the old

*We are far from regarding congress, in echoing the false statement of the president, as free from blame. It ought to have seen and corrected the executive-mistake. Yet it is not surprising that it took the president at his word. The late congress had some able members, and it adopted some judicious measures; but we express only the common sentiment of all parties, when we say it was far from covering itself with glory, and that it is to be hoped another congress like it will not meet again very soon. Various motives, no doubt, governed the members. Many, no doubt, ignorant of the distinction between war and hostilities, really believed the president, and therefore regarded the suggestion that war did not exist, and exist by the act of Mexico, as proceeding either from a want of patriotism, or from a factious opposition to the administration. Some, perhaps, felt that they were bound by their party obligations to support executive measures, whether right or wrong; others felt that the declaration of the president, whether true or false, would shield them; others still, perhaps, acquiesced, lest their patriotism should be questioned, and their opposition be set down to faction; and, finally, a number, very likely, believing war to be inevitable, and not undesirable, held that it mattered little on what pretence it was made, providing it was made and prosecuted with vigor. These could see no good likely to result from the deliberations of congress. The issue presented, the actual state of the army, were adapted to mislead many, and left no time to deliberate, to take a calm survey of the momentous question, and correct first impressions. All was hurry and confusion. The danger was imminent, and permitted no delay. The administration and its confidential friends would suffer no division of the question, and through the influence of committees forced members either to vote the war or bear the odium of refusing to vote the reinforcements and supplies necessary to the safety of the army. Those who had scruples could obtain no division and no delay, and the greater part of the members of both houses yielded to the executive. It is to be regretted they did; but, however censurable they were, their wrong does not relieve the president, nor can their votes under protest be pleaded by his friends in mitigation of his conduct; because it was by his act that they were led, almost compelled, to do what they did.

offences we had had to complain of she had acknowledged, and they had been settled in a convention of the two republics. True, she had not, in all cases, fulfilled her engagements; but she had manifested no unwillingness to fulfil them, and no one doubts that she would have fulfilled them, had it not been for her unsettled and distracted internal state. The more recent difficulties growing out of the affair of Texas demanded great delicacy and forbearance on our part. She felt herself wronged and humbled by the annexation of Texas to the Union, and, however blameworthy we may choose to regard her conduct, we are sure, if the cases had been reversed, we should have behaved at least no better than she did. She protested, as was her undoubted right, against the annexation of Texas; but she committed no act of violence against us, so long as we confined our army of occupation to territory over which Texas had actually exercised jurisdiction. We might well have forborne to press our claim further, and it would have been no derogation of our national dignity to have refrained from pushing our claims at once to their furthest limits against a weak, humbled, and distracted, albeit gasconading, neighbour. It would have been wise and just to give her time to cool,time for her wounds to begin to heal, and to reconcile herself to her humiliating loss,-especially since she had been stripped of the province of Texas through her misfortune, not her fault.

The necessity of sending our troops from Corpus Christi to the Rio Grande, to occupy a position within territory claimed indeed by Texas, but which it is well known continued to be subject to Mexican laws, and to form a portion of one of the undoubted states or provinces of the Mexican republic, was not at all urgent. That the position taken up by General Taylor, under orders of the president, was in territory which had never been in the actual possession of Texas, and which had continued since as before Texan independence subject to Mexican authority, it is worse than idle to question. Whether we had a right to claim under Texas beyond what Texas held in actual subjection to her laws may be disputed; but even admitting that we had a valid title to all of Mexico to which Texas saw proper to set up a claim, there can be no doubt that a little patience would have enabled us to adjust peaceably the question of boundary between the two republics. But if worst had come to worst, we might at any time have fixed upon the

boundary we intended to maintain, and confined ourselves simply to its defence. The real cause of the war, disguise it as we may, was the act of the president in ordering the troops under General Taylor to the Rio Grande, an act done on his sole responsibility, while congress was in session, and without necessity or reason of state; for, so long as we were the stronger party, there was no danger of our losing our title by delaying to vindicate it, and there was no other conceivable reason for urging its immediate vindication. The vindication could have been safely, prudently delayed. The act, therefore, which brought on the war was an unnecessary act, and therefore the war itself was uncalled for.*

It is contended, in opposition to us, that the removal of our troops to the territory between the Nueces and the Rio Grande was not the immediate cause of the war,-1. Because Mexico has never made that act a special ground of complaint; and, 2. Because that territory was as much a part of the state of Texas as that to the East of the Nueces. These replies are both disingenuous. That the actual jurisdiction in some instances and to some extent crossed the Nueces we believe to be true; for Corpus Christi itself, on the map we have consulted, is to the West of that river; but that it extended to the Rio Grande, or even far to the West of the Nueces, is not true. Texas may have declared that the whole of the territory between the two rivers was included within one of her congressional districts, for that was easy enough to do; but there is no one bold enough to say that she opened her polls and received votes for her congressmen from the citizens of Tamaulipas, in the vicinity of what is now Fort Brown, or even in the vicinity of Point Isabel. The laws of Texas were never acknowledged or regularly enforced in that section. That Texas set up a claim to the Rio Grande, we concede; but that she actually exercised jurisdiction to the Rio Grande, or far to the West of the Nueces, is what we deny, and the government, so far as we have seen, has offered no evidence to the contrary.

The second reply is more disingenuous still. Mexico sets up a claim

to the whole of Texas to the Sabine, and that claim she refuses to relinquish. While she continues her claim to the whole, she can make no distinction as to a part. She could not plead our occupation of the territory in question as a special grievance, without making a distinction between it and that East of it, and, in fact, not without abandoning her claim to all the rest of Texas. This reply by some of the defenders of the president may answer to throw dust in the eyes of the people, but it is really unworthy of an American citizen. Nothing would have pleased our government more than to have found Mexico complaining of that invasion as a special grievance. No doubt, it was the very blunder they hoped to provoke her to commit; and if she had committed it, we can believe our troops would have been speedily ordered back to the Nueces; for it would have virtually yielded to us all the territory Texas actually possessed, and with that the president would probably have been satisfied. It is idle, then, to draw any inference from the silence of Mexico as to the act which we say was the immediate cause of the war. That it was the immediate cause of the war we may infer from the fact, that, till it was done, Mexico made no effort to disturb our possession of Texas; and there can be little doubt, that, but for it, she would silently have abandoned her claim to all of Texas East of the Nueces.