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and before her statesmen had learned to understand our aims and institutions.

2. Is it objected that this treaty will prevent annexation? Why, Fuente, the Mexican Minister of Foreign Affairs, refused to sign it because he feared to give away the sovereignty of Mexico! How can these objections be reconciled? By a division of sovereignty. But what is Sovereignty without the concomitant power? What the empty crown without the head to plan or the arm to execute? Mexico has the right, but not the power; we furnish the last. If, then, it be objected to this treaty that it will prevent any annexation to this country, because it elevates Mexico into the dignity of an assured independence, I ask, if this followed, would annexation be less desirable or less probable?

3. Is it objected that we have territory and people enough for our own happiness and contentment? If Mr. Jefferson had so believed, we never should have had our southwestern empire, with the Mississippi, holding by its mobile drops of water this Union in its steadfast poise. If John Quincy Adams had so reasoned, would not Florida still have been, as Cuba is now, a menace to our peace and a clog to our progress? Had Robert J. Walker and John C. Calhoun so believed, we never should have had the lone star of Texas on our flag and her territory in our Union. Had James K. Polk so believed, California would still have remained a paralyzed limb of the diseased body of Mexico. Had Pierce so believed, the Mesilla would still be a terra incognita, and its mineral wealth would have had no chance for development. I have no fear of territorial expansion, sir, with the spirit of the Confederation preserved uncorrupted and pure.

4. Is it objected that Mexico has not a population suited to our system of self-government? Had not Louisiana her French, Florida and Texas their Spanish, and California and New Mexico a population like that of Mexico? Had not all our States their native Indian population? These are becoming homogeneous with the lapse of time. There is no reason why, under our system of local self-government and Federal decentralization, all Mexico should not live and progress under our Government, with the same success to herself and safety to us which these acquisitions have witnessed.

5. Is it objected that already we have distractions and threats of dissolution? Is it said that more territory would only add to our disquietude? Is the slavery question to disturb us in the path of empire? Are we to be hemined in by fear of disunion? If this country, with its present Constitution, reposing on the intelligence of our people and the history of its formation, cannot grow without danger, it cannot live much longer without gangrene and decay. If there be vitality to hold us together, there is vitality with which to expand. Nay, without this expansion, decay is more rapid and disruption more certain. This country has settled one thing beyond the power of politicians to disturb it; and that is, that the Federal Government shall not intervene in the home affairs of the States; and that when they are in preparation for admission, no power but themselves, guided by their own wants and interests, shall, or of right ought to, prohibit or establish, or in any way control, their domestic institutions.

Mr. STANTON. Has the gentleman read the veto messages of Governors Black and Medary? Perhaps if he had, he would not regard that doctrine as the fixed policy of the country.

Mr. Cox. This decentralizing doctrine makes expansion safe. If this be accepted as the policy of the country, expansion has no terrors which do not now menace us. Nay, an active outgoing policy would divert attention from internal dissensions. It would pour a vigorous lifeblood into the older States. It would give activity to young and vigorous States, which would hasten under our protecting ægis.

I have no argument to make in an American Congress for or against slavery. Its discussion, in an ethical light, was exhausted by Aristotle two thousand years ago. The polemics of New England do no more than echo the words of the Stagyrite. They cannot add any thing to this discussion. As an economical question, if slavery could be made profitable in Mexico, it would go there. It may, therefore, go to the tierras calientes. It never went there under Spanish rule, and cannot go there now for physical reasons. Mr. Greeley wonders why Mr. Buchanan should covet it, when its soil and production unfit it for slave labor! He would wonder no more if he understood the Ostend manifesto in its comprehensive sense. It is no matter, in so far as it concerns our Federal unityhow much soever it may concern our ethics-how many slave or free States we have, so long as they are equal under a sacred organic law. Already the preponderance in favor of free States is declared. Southern statesmen like Hammond and Stephens acquiesce in it as a part of the law of emigration, locomotion, and population. Mexico would aggrandize our slave States, if she would not furnish one from her area. Dissimilarity of States in production and institutions is a part of our system. Out of these brotherly dissimilitudes, as out of the vari-colored stones of the quarry, a fabric has arisen, whose harmony and majesty of proportion and strength are the wonder of art! With this as our policy, our territorial expansion is as illimitable as the continent and as safe as the stars in their appointed orbits. As safe as the stars: for they, too, like nations, are the effluence of God, evolving and expanding through the universe by the everlasting law of growth! They obey the same law by which the seed bursts into life, rises above the ground, effloresces and decays with perpetual bloom and sere. The same law of growth applies to our physical bodies as well as to the heavenly bodies. Without growth both body and mind decay and die. Growth is the condition of health. It is so with nations. History writes it on the frontlet of time as its foremost, grandest conception. God writes it in the flower, in the globular water drop, and the star, as well as in Egypt, Rome, and Greece. In the feudal ages of darkness, and in the later ages of illumination; in the eras of despotism, as well as of liberty; wherever His finger records His fiat upon the everlasting scroll, there is this law: "Whosoever, whatsoever doth not grow, is dead already!"

Is the Anglo-Saxon race an exception? Is this great self-government, whose next census will show under its flag thirty-six million people, and an advancement greater than ever before in material wealth, to become the laggard of the century? Will the next seventy years witness the retrogression of this continent into anarchy and ruin? Is Mexico's past

thirty years the index to show how far toward the occulation is the orb of our destiny? Or is Mexico to be invigorated and renewed by a new life from this race of ours? May not the mines of Chihuahua and Guanajuato be made to glisten again under our energy? Will not the valley of the Aztecs again blossom as the rose, under a better dispensation of civil rights and social order? May not those mysterious palaces, buried deep in the solitudes of Yutacan, whose sculptured façades Stephens desired to rescue from destruction, again resound with the voice of life and blessing? May not the fisheries of the California Gulf become the source of a new trade, and its pearls deck the diadem of a new empire? These may be dreams, but I have yet to see the American who will not say that at some time and in some emergency the United States will" have to take charge" of Mexico, and, if necessary, gather up her mutilated members, and, by the charm of our polity, fit them to each other-articulation, tendon, muscle, bone, and sinew--and breathe into the form the soul of an active and benignant juvenescence !

If any Power interfere in Mexico, it must be either France, Spain, England, or the United States. The interference of Spain would only renew, with tenfold force, the antagonisms which now beset Mexico. Do we want England to make another Canada on our south; to hold us within her iron vice? But England has expressed the wish that we should interfere. The late accomplished Colonial Minister, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, gave voice to the best sentiment of the proud British mind, in the conclusion of his speech for the establishment of the British Columbia Government, on the 8th of July, 1858, when he said:

"I conclude, sir, with an humble trust, that the Divine Disposer of all human events may afford the safeguard of His blessing to our attempt to add another community of Christian freemen to those by which Great Britain confides the records of her empire, not to pyramids and obelisks, but to States and Commonwealths, whose history will be written in her language."

Some of England's statesmen have taunted us with having no foreign policy. We deserved the taunt. If rightly understood, England, sir, has nothing but pride in these outgrowths of her own strength; and she will have no protest to make against the honor and advancement of her own offspring. Laying England and the United States aside, what would be the result of a French interference? Not very remotely, a war of races for supremacy, not alone in Mexico, but on this continent. The Latin race and the Anglo-Saxon race cannot expand here without collision. The Anglo-Saxon, or rather the Anglo-American race, which is the best development of the Teutonic and Celtic, for adventure, enterprise, and martial success, has already combined the white races in America north of Mexico into liberal governments. History shows that that race has no returning footstep in its advancement. Is it desirable to array these elements here, in the face of this indomitable race?

An intervention by us, supporting a liberal Government like that of Juarez, which offers us free and safe intercourse, emigration, and religious toleration, with a stipulation by which our arms can be called in to crush anarchy and enforce order, is the only mode by which jealousy can be avoided and order established. A suffrage by which the felon and the inferior races of Mexico are restricted for a decade, would stay Mexico

from an inevitable relapse into barbarism, and, at the same time, by enhancing property and promoting prosperity, reconcile every impatient element in Mexico to our salutary protectorate.

A year ago, when I suggested to this Congress that the juncture was upon us when we should stop marking time, and begin moving forward, and that Congress was not up with the enterprise of the nation, the Madrid and Paris presses did me the honor to translate my speech, and to give it more importance than it merited, as the expression of what La Cronica newspaper was pleased to call the impetuosity of La Joven America. It expressed its amazement at the simple remark, "that, if we consider just now the elements of our people-martial, mechanical, intellectual, agricultural, and political-who will doubt that there are a dozen locomotive republics already fired up and ready for movement?" But, Mr. Speaker, I put it to the members of this House, whether there be one here who cannot say, that at least one regiment combining such elements can be mustered in each of the two hundred and thirty-seven districts of the United States? If legal sanction were given, either by the repeal of the neutrality laws or by some other Governmental action, quadruple this number could be raised before the telegraph had finished clicking the inspiring intelligence. That this is so, we cannot help. We should not desire to repress, only to restrain it. However much our caution may condemn and guard these elements, there is not an American who does not cherish a lurking, smiling approbation of this adventurous and elastic spirit which thrills the great nation of the New World! Call it what you will-manifest destiny, territorial expansion, star of empire, La Joven America, and even fillibusterism-it is here. We must make the best of it. If its current be not properly restrained within its banks, if we neglect, despise, or unduly repress it, it will only spend its force violently and disastrously, when once it takes its destined way!

Is there any American who wishes to consult European Powers as to the propriety or policy of such an expansion? Is there any one who fears a fatal blow from these Powers? We do not exist by the sufferance of Europe, but by its insufferance. We did not grow to our present greatness by its fostering care; but by its neglect, and in spite of its malevolence. We do not ask its pardon for being born, nor need we apologize to it for growing. It has endeavored to prevent even the legitimate extension of our commerce, and to confine us to our own continent. But if we can buy Cuba of Spain, it is our business with Spain. If we have to take it, it is our business with Providence. If we must save Mexico, and make its weakness our strength, we have no account to render unto Europe or its dynasties. A year ago, in glancing at European politics, I foresaw the portentous storm of the coming war. Scarcely had my language been published, before the balance of power quivered over Europe, and snapped like brittle glass, at an imperial yet sinister New Year's greeting in the Tuileries to the Austrian Minister. Soon the sword of Napoleon was thrown into the scales of Italian independence! The treaties of 1814 fell. The alliances of one year ago were blown into fragments from the rifled cannon of Solferino. As a consequence of this condition, not yet settled, all such alliances cannot be relied on to pursue us to any end on this continent.

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If European Powers choose to expand their empire and energize their people, we have no protests, no arms to prevent them. England may push from India through the Himalayas to sell her calicoes to the numberless people of Asia, and divide with France the empires of India, Burmah, and China. Civilization does not lose by their expansion. Russia may push her diplomacy upon Pekin, and her armies through the Caucasus, and upon Persia and Tartary; she may even plant her Greek cross again on the mosque of St. Sophia, and take the Grecian Levant into her keeping as the head of its Church and civilization. France may plant her forts and arts upon the shores of the Red Sea; complete the canalization of Suez; erect another Carthage on the shores of the Mediterranean; bind her natural limits from Mont Blanc, in Savoy, to Nice, upon the sea. Sardinia may become the nucleus of the Peninsula, and give to Italy a name and a nationality. Even Spain, proud and poor, may fight over again in Africa the romantic wars with the Morescoes, by which she educated that chivalry and adventure, which three centuries ago made her the mistress of the New World. She may demand territory of Morocco, as idemnity for the war. America has no inquiry to make, no protocol to sign. These are the movements of an active age. They indicate health, not disease-growth, not decay. They are links in the endless chain of Providence. They prove the mutability of the most imperial of human institutions; but, to the philosophic observer, they move by a law as fixed as that which makes the decay of autumn the herald of spring. They obey the same law by which the constellations change their places in the sky. Astronomers tell us that the "southern cross," which guarded the adventurer upon the Spanish main four centuries ago, and which now can be seen, the most beautiful emblem of our salvation, shining down through a Cuban and Mexican night-just before the Christian era glittered in our northern heavens! The same GREAT WILL, which knows no North and no South, and which is sending again, by an irreversible law, the southern cross to our northern skies, on its everlasting cycle of emigrationdoes it not control the revolutions of nations, and the vicissitudes of empires? The very stars in their courses are "Knights of the Golden Circle," and illustrate the record of human advancement. They are the type of that territorial expansion from which this American continent cannot be exempted without annihilation. The finger of Providence points to our nation as the guiding star of this progress. Let him who would either dusk its radiancy, or make it the meteor of a moment, cast again with nicer heed our nation's horoscope.

HAYTI AND LIBERIA.

COMMERCIAL QUESTIONS MORE IMPORTANT THAN RECOGNITION-BLACK REPUBLICS-NEGRO EQUALITY-COLONIZATION.

Delivered in the House of Representatives June 2, 1862.

Mr. Cox. I propose, in the few remarks which I shall make, to give something in brief of the history, condition, and commerce of Hayti and Liberia.

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