teen States of this Union! This is in the fourth article; and then follows the proposed stipulations on our part, "in consideration of this extension of the boundaries of the United States." The first of these is, to pay a sum of money, in blank, to Mexico; and the next, to assume and pay the claims, liquidated and unliquidated, of our citizens on Mexico. Here we have the President's draught and proposition for a treaty.

And how does the Counter-Project of the Mexican Commissioners differ from this? It proposes that the line of boundary shall be so drawn, that Mexico shall cede to the United States, besides Texas, five degrees of latitude, or more than one half of the territory of Upper California, comprising about 190,000 square miles, or an area larger than that of eleven of the Atlantic States of this Union, taken together, beginning with Maine and running through to Virginia. This is in the fourth article; and then come the articles in which it is stipulated, "in just compensation for the extension of old limits,' first, that the United States shall pay to Mexico a sum of money, in blank; and next, this government shall take upon itself to pay and satisfy the claims, liquidated and unliquidated, of our citizens on Mexico. Such is the Counter-Project. And what, we ask, now becomes of the official statement of the Message, that this project proposes to cede territory "for a pecuniary consideration"-as if there was something offensive in that but contains "no provision for the payment by Mexico of the just claims of our citizens?" If there is no such provision in the plan proposed by Mexico, then there is none in the plan proposed by the President himself.

There was not only indemnity offered in the case, but indemnity of the most ample kind.

We do not know that anybody would think of setting up the pretence, that the territory proposed to be ceded was not, at least, equal to the amount of these claims. There cannot be a doubt that it was worth a great deal more, and that equal justice would have required the payment of a considerable balance to Mexico, on account of the cession. It includes the harbor and bay of San Francisco, of itself worth a great deal more to the United States than the three, or four, or five

The

| millions of Mexican indebtedness. territory is about three times as large as the whole of New-England; and though, no doubt, a considerable portion of it, lying interior, between the coast chain and the Rocky Mountains, is of little value, yet we know that other parts of it have been found valuable enough to attract to it a considerable and increasing emigration from our own country. This is particularly the case with the country on the Sacramento, which is understood to be settled principally by emigrants from the United States. All these settlers would be brought within our own limits by this cession-thus putting an end at once to a serious difficulty which was brewing in that quarter before the war began, and which could hardly fail, sooner or later, to bring on another Annexation question to disturb the peace of the two countries. The Message sets forth in strong terms the advantages, commercial and other, which would accrue to the United States from the possession of Upper California. But all this has its best application to that northern portion, including the bay of San Francisco, which lies above the thirty-seventh parallel. It is this portion of the country that, "if held by the United States, would soon be settled by a hardy, enterprising, and intelligent portion of our population." It is the bay of San Francisco that "would afford shelter for our navy, for our numerous whale ships, and other merchant vessels employed in the Pacific Ocean, and would, in a short period, become the mart of an extensive and profitable commerce with China, and other countries of the East." One thing is certain—the President and his partisans are estopped by the Message from setting up any want of value in the cession which Mexico proposed to make, to constitute a full indemnity, and a good deal more than that, for the claims of our citizens on the justice of that country.

Here, then, we have the important fact that this object of the war, namely, the obtaining of indemnity for our unsatisfied claims on Mexico, was fully met and responded to by that government at the conferences in September, between the Commissioners of the two republics. These claims have figured largely in all the war manifestos of the President. All that he

has had to say, and repeat, as he does in this last Message, about "the wanton violation of the rights of person and property of our citizens committed by Mexico; her repeated acts of bad faith through a long series of years, and her disregard of solemn treaties, stipulating for indemnity to our injured citizens;" all this, and much more of the same sort, wrought up, in the face of notorious facts, to the point of most absurd exaggeration and bluster, has had reference, of course, to these claims, for which, it stands confessed and recorded, whatever may have been her conduct in regard to them in times past, Mexico offered, in the conferences under the walls of her beleaguered capital, the most ample indemnity. From that moment these claims ceased to be matter which could be talked about, with decency, as cause of war with that power; from that moment, if war was to be prosecuted further against her, for any cause or any objects whatever, it was not certainly on account of these claims. And while the claims themselves could no longer be set up as a reason for continuing the war, it was equally impossible, with decency, to talk any longer, as the President does in this Message-perhaps from the mere habit of a sort of parrot repetition -about our magnanimous forbearance, of years' duration, in regard to these claims, manifested by our not having long and long ago asserted our rights by force; and how patiently we sought for redress by amicable negotiation; and how we were finally insulted in the person of "our minister of peace," by the mortifying rejection he endured. All this, we say, as incident to the subject matter of these claims, became obsolete, after the tender of full indemnity made by the Mexican Commissioners in September. And this war, as re-commenced and prosecuted after the breaking up of the conferences near Chapultepec, must find its justification, if any there be, in something else besides these claims, or any conduct of Mexico in relation to them.

But we observe that the President, in his Message, with that general disingenuousness and unvarying obliquity of purpose, which characterize nearly all the statements of the Message on the subject of the war, attempts to confound the understand ing of his readers, by affecting to insist

upon the expenses of the war, as if he had ever made these expenses any part of his demands upon Mexico for indemnity. He does not make this assertion in terms; that would have been too gross and palpable for him to venture upon. And yet he means that the uninitiated reader shall so understand him. Referring to the project of a treaty, prepared at home, and which Mr. Trist took out with him, and to the fact that by the terms of that plan, "the indemnity required by the United States was a cession of territory," he proceeds to state why it was that this kind of indemnity-namely, territory-was insisted on. The reason is thus stated: "It is well known that the only indemnity which it is in the power of Mexico to make, in satisfaction of the just and long deferred claims of our citizens against her, and the only means by which she can reimburse the United States for the expenses of the war, is a cession to the United States of a portion of her territory."

Certainly no plain man, unacquainted with the particular facts, could read this paragraph without concluding that the demands of the President for indemnity, as imbodied in the provisions of this project of a treaty, embraced the expenses of the war; that, instead of being a demand of indemnity for three or five millions at most, the demand was for indemnity to the amount of a hundred millions at least

for the full cost of the war, up to that time, was not one dollar within that sum. The advantage, no doubt, which the President proposed to himself by this statement, was the creation of a prevalent popular impression, that, however the actual issue might turn out, and whatever criminality, in the public es.imation, had marked his conduct in precipitating the country into this war, he, for one, had endeavored to take care that it should cost the country nothing-except, indeed, some thousands of lives, which it would be difficult to make anybody pay for; that Mexico, besides being chastised into a compliance with whatever terms of peace we might see fit to prescribe to her, was to pay the money expenses of her own humiliation. And, besides this, it was convenient to the argument he was endeavoring to set up, to swell the supposed indemnity which was to be exacted of Mexico, from three or five

millions to a hundred millions; because it was only in this way that he could put a plausible face on his bold assumption of the inability of Mexico to meet our claims in any way but by a cession of territory. And now, after all this, what will be thought of the President of the United States, when the fact comes to be stated and proved, that by the terms of his own project of a treaty, not only was no claim set up for the expenses of the war, but any pretence of that sort was necessarily negatived and excluded? Nobody will be silly enough to pretend that under the stipulations of a treaty of peace, which makes not the slightest reference to the expenses of the war on either side, either party is to pay more than its own expenses. In the President's plan of a treaty, Mexico is not asked, nor is the remotest hint conveyed that she is expected, to pay us the costs of the war. Besides, any such idea is excluded by the stipulations actually inserted in the instrument. Mexico was indebted to our citizens in a certain amount-say four millions of dollars-and this plan proposes that if Mexico will cede to the United States certain lands, the government of the United States will undertake to satisfy the creditors of Mexico in this country for this indebtedness, in such manner that she shall be fully discharged from it. And, as it is understood that the lands proposed to be ceded are worth more than this four millions of dollars, it is proposed that the United States shall pay to Mexico the balance of this value, whatever it may be ascertained or agreed to be. Such was the President's own proposition for a settlement and treaty of peace with Mexico; and he does not get through the tortuous course of his Message without giving this very account and explanation of the matter.

"As the territory," he says, "to be acquired by the boundary proposed, might be estimated to be of greater value than a fair equivalent for our just demands, our Commissioner was authorized to stipulate for the payment of such additional pecuniary consideration as was deemed reasonable."

Not a word here about the expenses of the war. No intimation here that the balance of value to be paid in money to Mexico was only so much as would remain af

ter deducting four millions for the demands due our citizens, and a hundred millions more for the cost of the war. The President knows as well as we do, that the expenses of this war, end when and how it may, are to be borne by the people of the United States; and he did not entertain the remotest idea, when this project of a treaty was prepared, that Mexico was to be made to pay, or asked to pay these expenses, or any part of them. He knew then, and he knows now, that Mexico will never make a treaty with the United States on any such basis.

In our account of what the President proposed as the basis of a treaty with Mexico, we have had reference to what the Washington Union some time since published as "the authentic copy of the draught of a treaty carried out by Mr. Trist."* It would seem that Mr. Trist went a step further, in the project presented by him to the Mexican Commissioners. He inserted, in the fifth article, a reference to the stipulation contained in article eight, in regard to a right of way across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, as forming a part of the general consideration for the undertakings proposed on the part of the United States; and then, by way of addition to the stipulations for paying the claims of our own citizens, and the payment of a clear sum of money to Mexico, he inserted this express renunciation: "The United States abandon forever all claims against the United Mexican States, on account of the expenses of the war." After all this, it is difficult to understand how the President could have the courage to talk about the expenses of the war in the manner he has done in the Message.. At any rate, we trust an enlightened public will understand the true state of the case.

Thus far, then, we have seen that two principal subjects or matters of difference between the United States and Mexico at the commencement of the war, were actually removed, so far as the most ample concessions on the part of Mexico could remove them, at the conferences near Chapultepec in September last. Mexico yielded her pretensions to the State of Texas, and all complaints she had to make on ac

* We have not had in hand the official papers as sent in to Congress with the Message.

she offered, also, so far to relinquish her possessory right, or right of occupation, to the wide uninhabited frontier of the country between the two rivers, as to stipulate that it should be preserved as an uninhabited and desert space forever, expressly for a safe and peaceable frontier between the two countries. And this enables us to see exactly upon what precise pretensions and demands of the President it was, in regard to territory, that the war was renewed, after the concessions made at the conferences near Chapultepec; and we desire to set down these pretensions and demands very precisely, and to call the attention of the country to them in a very particular manner, that the people may clearly understand what it really was, the war was resumed for. The war, then, was resumed and prosecuted, after the conferences near Chapultepec, for the following objects:

First, to compel Mexico, who was willing and ready to relinquish her right of occupation in the wide uninhabited space between the Nueces and the Rio Grande, so as to make that desert space in effect the boundary between the two countries, to go further and cede to us in absolute sovereignty and jurisdiction, the whole of that territory up to the Rio Grande;

Second, to compel Mexico, who was willing to yield us one half, and the most valuable portion of Upper California, to go further, and sell to us the other half also; And, third, to compel Mexico to sell to us her province of New Mexico.

Of these three objects, the first is the only one, it will be observed, which, in any shape whatever, found a place among those original subjects of demand, to which alone the war from its inception, apparently or professedly, had any relation. The other two objects became objects of the war for the first time, so far as any distinct avowal or disclosure is concerned, when it was renewed after the conferences near Chapultepec. But the truth is that the whole three objects just specified, stand in fact, when properly understood, on the same footing. The demand which the President makes of a boundary on the Rio Grande, is just as much in the spirit of conquest as the rest, These last, as we now see, stand out open and undisguised. To compel our unwilling enemy, by force

of arms, to sell her territory to us, is to exercise over her and her territory the rights of conquest. Payment in such a case is no equivalent. It is not a bargain, though we pay our money for the lands, where the cession is compulsory. If effected, it is nothing less than a robbery, with the insult added of throwing our purse in the face of our victim, by way of charity, or for the sake of appearances. The object is to dismember the Mexican empire, and appropriate her territories to our own use, by virtue of our military superiority. The President wants these territories because he thinks it will gratify a spirit of rapacity which he imagines dwells in the hearts of our people, and will glorify his administration before the masses, who, he believes, will make no account whatever of the money price of the robbery. He believes they would like it still better if he had resolved to keep the territory already conquered, and the money too. And we do not entertain a doubt that he would have preferred this policy from the first, if he had thought it as practicable as the other; he would have let appearances take care of themselves.

The truth is, that the offer of money to Mexico for her conquered provinces, was not to pay for the land, but to buy a peace of her after the conquest. He thought this would be better than perpetual war, and the support of large standing armies, to maintain the conquests. It was not justice, but policy, that dictated the offer. It was better, he thought, to pay Mexico twenty millions for her craven consent to her own dismemberment and degradation, than undertake to maintain his conquests by arms, at the cost of another hundred millions. Brennus, the Gallic conqueror, finding his affairs in desperate condition, but game to the last, demanded to receive of Rome a thousand pounds of gold for retiring from his conquests, for thus he would go home an acknowledged conqueror, though giving up the provinces he had overrun, Our modern American Brennus understands the glory of conquest differently; he is willing to pay Mexico a thousand pounds of gold to stop her resistance, allow him to keep the provinces he has overrun, and so come home a conqueror. Brennus proudly threw his sword into the scale at the last moment, as his ultimate argument