Austria. Every thing in the northern, middle, and western states, if not in the southern, is pushing us through democratic absolutism in the direction of cæsarism, and hastening the day, when by a coup d'état the president will make himself a parvenu emperor. That is the direction things have been taking ever since General Jackson became president, and which nothing as yet has been able to divert.

In his foreign politics the president seems not to have been wise, active, or successful. He might easily when minister to Great Britain, if he had been so disposed, have settled satisfactorily the Central American question, but he preferred to leave it open as an issue to help his nomination and election to the presidency, and as a chance to acquire glory for his administration. Its settlement now seems further off than ever, and has by mismanagement become so complicated that, if ever settled, it will receive a FrancoBritish, not an American solution. For ourselves we shall be glad to see it settled in any way that will secure a free transit across the isthmus to the commerce of all nations, and close the Central American states to the operations of filibusters.

We have, no doubt, just causes of complaint against Mexico, a republic which can hardly be regarded as a state; but the lust for territorial acquisition has prevented our government from either taking the proper steps to obtain justice for our own citizens, or offering its own friendly offices to assist the distracted republic in reëstablishing legal order and preserving peace. We have been quite willing to see her fall to pieces, counting with certainty on getting the fragments at our convenience. We have thought that a little idle declamation about the "Monroe doctrine," wholly inapplicable to the case, would guard our destined prey from any attempt on the part of a European power to snatch it from us; but without an army, and with a navy inferior to that of Spain, our fulminations of the Monroe doctrine are not remarkably terrifying to Europeans, and we find now that France and England are quite likely to disregard them. The proposition of the president to congress, to authorize him to invade and establish a protectorate over the northern provinces of the republic, has aroused the vigilance and activity of Great Britain, and we shall hereafter have to reckon with her in Mexico as well as in Nicaragua and Costa Rica.

We have no great choice between the rival parties strug

gling for power in Mexico, for we have no confidence in the loyal intentions of the chiefs of either. Let which will succeed, the church and society will suffer; order will not be reëstablished, or the condition of the poor people ameliorated. The elements of a well-organized, orderly, efficient, and progressive government, are wanting in Mexico. The mass of her population are uninstructed, ignorant, and poor, only a degree above the condition of slaves; the higher classes are fearfully depraved, perhaps outwardly Catholic, but to a great extent without faith, or affection for the true interests of the church. There may be, and no doubt are, many among the clergy who are learned, pious, and sincerely devoted to the duties of their sacred calling, but there are large numbers whose conduct is irregular and disedifying; while the regulars, or religious orders, possessing considerable revenues, will consent, even with the approbation of Rome, to no reforms or changes necessary to restore discipline, and place religion on a proper footing. Under these circumstances religion suffers, and society with it. One party confiscates the property of the church, and the other takes it under pretence of defending it; and the church is alike robbed by her pretended friends and her avowed enemies. There is little hope that the robbery will be discontinued, let which party will succeed, till the church has Tost her last dollar, her connection with the state is dissolved, and she is thrown on the voluntary affections of the people, and her own resources as the spiritual kingdom of God. The absorption of Mexico into our Union, so far as it would have this result, would, in our judgment, be no disaster, but a real gain to religion, though the church for a time would lose many now nominally her children. The same result would follow were she to fall into the hands of Great Britain, but not if she fell into the hands of France, or again into the hands of Spain. To become healthy, strong, and vigorous, Catholicity must, in our days, struggle with heresy and infidelity, and if her limbs be unbound, and the field be open and free, nothing needs to be apprehended. We think our government, when it had conquered Mexico, would have done her and the Catholic religion a real service if it had annexed her to the Union, and extended over her gradually the protection of our English common law, and germanized her. It is too late now. Both England and France are in our way, and though we could, on our own territory, where all our resources are at hand, and we can

bring all our forces to bear, withstand either or both combined, we cannot in a foreign country, or even on the ocean, do more than come off second best with either of them. A war with Great Britain is out of the question. Our mercantile classes, our cotton and rice planters, our pork, beef, and wheat growers would shrink from it with horror. She is the great consumer of our raw products, and the centre of our exchanges with whatever part of the world we trade.

We should have no serious objection to see Cuba one of the states of this Union, and it is a "fixed idea" of the American people, that if she passes from the possession of Spain, she must pass into that of no other European power. That she may some day be annexed to the Union is far from improbable, but the bill introduced into the senate, at the recommendation of the president, appropriating thirty millions of dollars towards obtaining it by purchase, is one of the coolest things we have ever read of in history, and we know not whether to regard it as the more insulting to our own national honor or to Spain. It is true we purchased of Napoleon I. the territory of Louisiana, and purchased it at a bargain; but it was in the market, and if there was dishonor it was on the part of the sovereign who offered it for sale, not on the part of the state that saw fit to purchase it. But Cuba is not in the market, and the president is as well aware of that fact as we are. We might take Cuba by force, though not without a larger army and a larger and better appointed navy than we now have; but we are not rich enough to buy it. Spaniards are not precisely Anglo-Americans. Not a few of our people, we are sorry to say, are ready to sell any thing they have, if at a bargain-there is nothing too sacred to be parted with. The husband would hardly hesitate to strip off and sell his wife's wedding ring, if he could obtain for it a hundred or even fifty per cent advance on its cost. No homestead is so sacred that they would refuse to sell it at a fair price. Indeed, they would sell the very graves of their ancestors, and even their bones. It does not occur to these that there is any thing censurable or regrettable in this, or that in regard to such matters any people can think, feel, or act differently from them. What is sentiment when it stands in the way of hard cash? But all people are not like this large portion of Americans, and the people of Spain less than most others. Spain may have lost in physical force

and in material splendor, but she retains her old Castilian pride, and her high sense of national honor. Cuba may be wrested from her by revolution or by foreign conquest, but she will never sell it, least of all to us, who have for so many years by our disloyalty, our filibusters, and our tampering with her subjects in Cuba, put her to such enormous expenses to retain it. There is something even more insulting in the reasons which it is proposed to offer to Spain to induce her to sell Cuba, than even in the proposition itself to buy it. Our minister is to say to the Spanish government: "Your possession of Cuba is distant and precarious, and it costs you a large sum annually to defend it, an expense which, in your present straightened circumstances, you can ill afford. We want Cuba; it is indeed very important, almost necessary to us, and we are ready and willing to buy it at a very liberal price, and hand you over the cash for it. You had better close with us at once, for if you will not sell it to us, we shall be obliged in our own interest to take it, and you will lose it and get nothing." We forget that it is precisely we who render her possession of Cuba precarious, and our disloyal acts that render necessary the enormous expenditures for its preservation to the Spanish crown; that the series of acts that render its possession precarious are ours, and that these acts on our part are done precisely in order to force her to sell it. A neighbor owns a farm adjoining mine, which I want, but which he has no disposition to part with. I enter into a league with his workmen on the farm to break down the fences, destroy the crops, and kill the cattle, horses, and sheep, and then I tell him, "You see, sir, your farm is worthless, and only a bill of expense to you. It costs you more to keep it in repair than it is worth, and more to keep a proper guard on the cultivators than all you can derive from its produce. It is decidedly for your interest to sell it. Furthermore, if you will not sell it, I shall be obliged to take forcible possession of it, in order to remove the scandal of such bad farming from my neighborhood." "But," he replies, "if you would conduct yourself as a good neighbor, and let my husbandmen alone, there would be no difficulty, no bad farming in the What do you think of your own conduct, in rendering my farm useless to me in order to induce me to sell it?" This is the way we treat Spain with regard to Cuba.

case.

But nobody is deceived in the case. Neither the president nor congress, neither Benjamin the Jew, nor Bennett

the Scotsman, expects to obtain Cuba by purchase. The offer to buy and pay is intended, after the act is done, to be a plea in justification to public opinion for taking possession of the island by force or revolution. We are informed, on what ought to be very high authority in the case, that a republican insurrection is completely organized throughout the island of Cuba, so complete and so strong that it is sure of success, if its leaders can only have an assurance from our government that when they have struck their blow, declared their independence of Spain, and instituted the republic, they will be received into the Union as a state. It is on this republican revolution of the Cubans themselves. under our encouragement and fostering care we chiefly rely, and the offer to buy, and the bill appropriating thirty millions towards carrying into effect the negotiation for the purchase, are intended to be offered as a proof that we are disposed to deal honorably with Spain, and also, if the bill pass, to be an assurance to the Cubans that we are willing to receive her into our family of states. The latter is the principal purpose. The bill has been introduced into congress chiefly for the purpose of committing congress and the people of the United States to the Cuban revolutionists. Hence the effort to manufacture public opinion throughout the Union, especially at the North, in its favor. The American people are not quite so unscrupulous as the administration and its supporters, and they need management and to be made to believe that in receiving Cuba they are not receiving stolen goods. The bill having failed this session of congress, we suppose the Cuban revolution will be adjourned for another year.

With regard to the Cubans we have no doubt from all we can learn that they have good reason to complain of the government of the mother country. They are held under a rigid despotic rule, indeed a military despotism, and studiously excluded from every office of trust and employment under government. They have no recognized rights, and may be arrested, executed, imprisoned, or exiled on the slightest suspicion. We have great sympathy with them, and sincerely wish success to any just measures they may adopt, motu proprio, to improve their political and civil condition. But we do not think that our people or our government are justified in interfering in the case. They are the subjects of Spain, and if they proved themselves loyal to Spain, their condition would soon become tolerable. Re

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