debts incurred and the crimes committed by its predecessors; and it entered into an agreement with several foreign states, England among the rest to make over a certain proportion of the customs revenues to meet the claims of foreign creditors. This arrangement was not kept, and timely satisfac tion was not given for wrongs committed against foreign subjects-wrongs for the most part, if not altogether, done by the government which Juarez had expelled from power, but for which of course he, as the successor to power, was properly responsible. Lord Russell, who had acted with great forbearance toward Mexico up to this time, now agreed to co-operate with France and Spain in exacting reparartion from Juarez. But he defined clearly the extent to which the intervention of England would go. England would join in an expedition for the purpose, if necessary, of seizing on Mexican custom-houses, and thus making good the foreign claims. But she would not go a step further. She would have nothing to do with upsetting the government of Mexico, or imposing any European system on the Mexican people. Accordingly the second article of the convention pledged the contracting parties not to seek for themselves any acquisition of territory or any special advantage, and not to exercise in the internal affairs of Mexico any influence of a nature to prejudice the right of the Mexican nation to choose and to constitute freely the form of its government. The Emperor of the French, however, had already made up his mind that he would establish a sort of feudatory monarchy in Mexico. He had long had various schemes and ambitions floating in his mind concerning those parts of America on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico which were once the possessions of France. In his dreamy, fantastic way he had visions of restoring French influence and authority somewhere along the shores of the gulf; and the outbreak of the Southern rebellion appeared to give him just the opportunity that he desired. At the time when the

convention was signed the affairs of the Federal States seemed all but hopeless, and for a k ng time after they gave no gleam of hope for the restoration of the Union. Louis Napoleon was convinced then, and for long after, that the Southern States would succeed in establishing their independence. He seems to have been of Mr. Roebuck's way of thinking, that "the only fear we ought to have is lest the independence of the South should be established without us." He was glad therefore of the chance afforded him by the Mexican convention, and at the very time when he signed the convention with the pledge contained in its second article, he had already been making arrangements to found a monarchy in Mexico. If he should have ventured to set up a monarchy with a French prince at its head, he would probably have done so ; but this would have been too bold a venture. He therefore persuaded the Archduke Maximilian, brother of the Emperor of Austria, to accept the crown of the monarchy he proposed to set up in Mexico. The archduke was a man of pure and noble character, but evidently wanting in strength of mind, and he agreed, after some hesitation to accept the offer.

Meanwhile the joint expedition sailed. We sent only a line-of-battle ship, two frigates, and 700 marines. France sent in the first instance about 2500 men, whom she largely reinforced immediately after. Spain had about fooo men, under the command of the late Marshal Prim. The allies soon began to find that their purposes were incompatible. There was much suspicion about the designs of France, although the French statesmen were every day repudiating in stronger and stronger terms the intentions imputed to them, and which soon proved to be the resolute purposes of the Emperor of the French. Some of the claims set up by France disgusted the other allies. The Jecker claims were for a long time after as familiar a subject of ridicule as ur own Pacifico claims have been. A Swiss house of Jecke &

Co. had lent the former government of Mexico seven hun dred and fifty thousand dollars and got bonds from tha government, which was on its very last legs, for fitteen millions of dollars. The government was immediately afterward upset, and Juarez came into power. M. Jecker modestly put in his claim for fifteen millions of dollars. Juarez refused to comply with the demand. He offered to pay the seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars lent and five per cent interest, but he declined to pay exactly twenty times the amount of the sum advanced. Mr. Jecker had by this time become somehow a subject of France, and the French government took up his claim. It was clear that the Emperor of the French had resolved that there should be war. At last the designs of the French government became evident to the English and Spanish plenipotentiaries, and England and Spain withdrew from the convention. England certainly ought never to have entered into it. But as she had been drawn in, the best thing then was for her to get out of it as decently and as quickly as she could. Nothing in the enterprise became her like to the leaving of it.

The Emperor of the French "walked his own wild road, whither that led him." He overran a certain portion of Mexico with his troops. He captured Puebla after a long and desperate resistence; he occupied the capital, and he set up the Mexican Empire, with Maximilian as emperor. French troops remained to protect the new empire. Against all this the United States government protested from time to time. They disclaimed any intention to prevent the Mexican people from establishing an empire if they thought fit, but they pointed out that grave inconveniences must arise if a foreign power like France persisted in occupying with her troops any part of the American continent. The Monroe doctrine, which by the way was the invention of George Canning and not of President Monroe, does not for

bid the establishing of a monarchy on the American conti nent, but only the intervention of a Europe an power to set up such a system, or any system opposed to liberty there. However, the Emperor Napoleon cared nothing just then about the Monroe doctrine, complacently satisfied that the United States were going to pieces, and that the Southern Confederacy would be his friend and ally. He received the protests of the American government with unveiled indifference. At last the tide in American affairs turned. The Confederacy crumbled away; Richmond was taken; Lee surrendered; Jefferson Davis was a prisoner. Then the United States returned to the Mexican question, and the American government informed Louis Napoleon that it would be inconvenient, gravely inconvenient, if he were not to withdraw his soldiers from Mexico. A significant movement of American troops under a renowned general, then. flushed with success, was made in the direction of the Mexi can frontier. There was nothing for Louis Napoleon but to withdraw. Up to the last he had been rocked in the vainest hopes. Long after the end had become patent to every other eye, he assured an English member of Parliament that he looked upon the Mexican Empire as the great est creation of his reign.

The Mexican Empire lasted two months and a week after the last of the French troops had been withdrawn. Maxi. milian endeavored to raise an army of his own, and to de. fend himself against the daily increasing strength of Juarez. He showed all the courage which might have been expected from his race and from his own previous history. But in an evil hour for himself, and yielding, it is stated, to the persuation of a French officer, he had issued a decree that all who resisted his authority in arms should be shot. By virtue of this monstrous ordinance, Mexican officers of the regular army, taking prisoners while resisting, as they were bound to do, the invasion of a European prince, were shot

like brigands. The Mexican general, Ortega, was one of those thus shamefully done to death. When Juarez conquered, and Maximilian, in his turn, was made a prisoner, he was tried by court-martial, condemned, and shot. His death created a profound sensation in Europe. He had in all his previous career won respect everywhere, and even in the Mexican scheme he was universally regarded as a noble victim who had been deluded to his doom. The conduct of Juarez in thus having him put to death raised a cry of horror from all Europe; and it must be allowed that, by the fatal decree which he had issued, the unfortunate Maximilian had left himself liable to a stern retaliation. There was cold truth in the remark made at the time, that if he had been only general and not Archduke Maximilian his fate would not have aroused so much surprise or anger.

The French Empire never recovered the shock of this Mexican failure. It was chiefly in the hope of regaining his lost prestige that the emperor tried to show himself a strong man in German affairs. More than three years before the fall of Maximilian the present writer, in commenting on Louis Napoleon's scheme, ventured to predict that Mexico would prove the Moscow of the Second Empire. Time has not shown that the prediction was rash. The French Empire outlived the Mexican Empire by three years and a few weeks. From the entering of Moscow to the arrival at St. Helena the interval was three years and one month.

We need not follow any farther the history of the American Civil War. The restoration of the Union, the assassi nation of President Lincoln, and the emancipation of the colored race from all the disqualifications, as well as all the bondage, of the slave system, belong to American and not to English history. But the Alabama dispute led to consequences which are especially important to England, and which shall be described in their due time. Mean