stipulated by the treaty of peace. This is a mistake. She has, indeed, lost a degree of her national importance. Her pride has been humbled, her vanity has been rebuked, her false position has been exposed and realized, and some of her people have fallen in battle; in these mortifications and visitations, her sufferings have been great. It is right that they should be great. It is natural. It is just. Wrong doing is corrected by pain and suffering. Great benefits are guarded by severe penalties, whenever and wherever violated or abused. The changes to which Mexico has been subjected, are for her good, her gain. She has ceded a portion of that territory to which she has proved false. Like the steward in the parable, she hid the talent that was given her to be improved, and made no interest. It was a territory that gave her no income, and to which she could afford no protection. She had proved her incapacity to develop the treasures of her soils, her forests, and her mines. She rested upon that beautiful region of the earth an incumbrance.* She was idle, where all nature invited to industry; † she was poor, where riches abounded on

*It is no exaggeration to say that it is impossible for one who has not been on the table-lands of Mexico to conceive of a climate so Elysian. There is not a day, and scarcely an hour, in the year when one could say, I wish it were a little warmer or a little cooler. No spot on earth will be more desirable than this for a residence whenever it is in possession of our race, with the government and laws they carry with them wherever they go. -Thompson's Recollections.

+ Although the whole road from the city of Vera Cruz to the city of Mexico passes through a country inexpressively picturesque and beautiful, yet the ignorant, idle, and degraded population, the total absence of cultivation and improvement, and a general appearance of wildness and desolation, produced with me feelings partaking of gloom and melancholy. Neither in going nor returning did I see one human being, man, woman, or child, engaged at work of any sort. The great mass of population doze out their lives with no higher thoughts or purposes than the beasts which perish around them. Thompson's Recollections.

every hand; * her highways were marked by the emblems of her religion, but instead of representing examples of goodness, of duty, of piety, they were made the sad index of outrage and murder.† In her domestic circles, her people were thoughtless, vain, and heartless. Without a permanent interest in the soil, their labors were selfish and temporary. They had but little to hope for, and they had but little encouragement in their incitements to duty. Their priests had the influence of friends, while their rule was more fatal than the maledictions of foes. Their pleasures were deemed paramount to duty. They could not comprehend the advantage of improvement; they did not understand the power of knowledge, nor appreciate the blessings that come from toil, time, and system. Their time was counted from sun to sun, and what the morrow should bring forth was a matter having no place in their economy. Their entire domain was but the field of contest, civil war, and bloodshed; faction displacing faction, anarchy passing for peace, and despotism for self-government. That such a nation, such a people, were spared so long, is

* "One thing," says Gilliam, "I must not forget to mention, - which must excite the contempt of the American agriculturist, the manure of a hacienda is never spread over the land, but in every instance is thrown out of the way in heaps, and when the winds and sun have sufficiently dried it, it is set on fire and suffered to conA gentleman once told me that he had seen a pile on fire for twelve months, the conflagration being very slow."

sume.

When a traveller is murdered, it is customary to bury him on the highway, and erect a cross over his grave. Gilliam says that "he verily believes that there is not a mile on the thoroughfare, from Mexico to Vera Cruz, that has not flowed with the blood of plundered and murdered individuals; and where you may behold upon either hand the sad and many emblems of the crucifix over fallen travellers."

"There is no country in the world," says Gilliam, "from the best information I could obtain, where individual citizens hold as large bodies of land as in Mexico, and it is estimated that, from seven millions of inhabitants, in all probability, less than five hundred thousand are the owners of all the terra firma of that rich country."

an example of God's mercy, almost without a parallel. There was nothing that could save the nation but justice. The manner in which this justice has been administered by the government of the United States is an example worthy to be studied, and emulated by all the nations of the earth. Its effects upon other nations of great power, will more than compensate for all the sufferings of the war. They will be led to reconsider the rights of their dependents, and more fully to provide for their wants.

What Mexico may gain by the war, is nationality. If she improves her lessons of experience, they will yield her wisdom and give her strength. She has been paid a sum of money for that which has yielded her nothing in the past, and which promised her nothing in the future. If her people would hold her remaining territory, let them study the conditions by which alone they can hope to succeed; and, if they manifest a desire to do right, and persevere, they need have no fear of failure.*

The gain to the government of the United States, is the preservation of its own integrity. It has been true to the great cause of liberty, justice, and humanity. It has been true to republican principles; true in the midst of temptation ; - true to itself, wherein are centred the hopes, the strength of all republics throughout the world. It has taught the great lesson, in fearful letters of blood, that republics are not to be exempted

"There is only one cure," says Macaulay, "for the evils which newly-acquired freedom produces, and that cure is freedom! When a prisoner leaves his cell, he cannot bear the light of day; he is unable to discriminate colors, or recognize faces; but the remedy is not to remand him into his dungeon, but to accustom him to the rays of the sun. The blaze of truth and liberty may at first dazzle and bewilder nations, which have become half blind in the house of bondage; but let them gaze on, and they will soon be able to bear it. In a few years men learn to reason; the extreme violence of opinion subsides; hostile theories correct each other; the scattered elements of truth cease to conflict, and begin to coalesce; at length, a system of justice and order is educed out of the chaos."

from national calamities, if they permit national evils and national wrongs; that national greatness consists in national goodness; that national strength is to be found in the virtue and intelligence of the people.

In the language of an eloquent senator,* " National character is national power; and the purer, the more elevated, the more spotless the character, the greater the power. I trust, therefore, in God, that I am right in the opinion that this war is upon our part just and honorable.

"Mexico is answerable for all these sad and sickening results. The war is just, because she commenced it. It does exist by her act; and, so help me God, but for that conviction, as I reverence truth and detest falsehood, I would never have voted for the act of the thirteenth of May, 1846."

By the stipulations of the treaty of peace, the gain to our country is gain to the cause of freedom. Our government receives no treasure, our people receive no wealth. Not one man of our twenty millions of people has the individual benefit of a single farthing extorted from Mexico by the conquests when achieved.

It is true, the ceded territory will doubtless prove of great consequence to the future inhabitants of this country; but the privileges secured are purely national, not individual, and they give power to a nation that is able and willing to protect them, and the universal cause of right in all coming time. The gain is not for the good of this country alone, it is a gain to humanity. It is not for the American, but for the race. This continent is to be the vast asylum of the world, for man to inhabit, in his weakness or strength, and to receive protection and encouragement.

The conquests of our army are not like those of the early ages of the world, where confiscation of property, and where liberty, were the forfeitures of defeat. We sought power that justice might be done, and protection given. Our government asks nothing from its people, but faithfulness to themselves, to + See Appendix B B.

* Hon. Reverdy Johnson.

their rights, and to their institutions. Their moral condition characterizes their institutions; it gives them birth, it gives them being. The people are made their own, protectors, their own guides, their own masters. The government of the United States is but a manifestation of their wishes, an imbodiment of their power.

It is asked, with apparent sincerity, by some, "What right have we to invade Mexico? What right have we to reduce a nation already too feeble to support itself, already too miserable for existence, and to dictate terms for settlement of expenditures which have given us the power to lay her prostrate at our feet?

By what right have we the power to do any thing? By what right is the soil of our land divided among its people? By what right does the citizen ask to be protected from wrong? By what right do freemen claim liberty of thought and conscience? By what right do we ask to be protected in our comforts, pleasures, and homes? By what right do we demand institutions of freedom and of knowledge?

BY THE RIGHTS OF JUSTICE AND HUMANITY. By the rights developed in God's providence, and which may be extended to all people, when all people shall know the laws and understand them, by which men, and governments, and nations may live, flourish, and be happy.

If man will but study the destiny of man and of nations, he will see a harmony of constitution pervading the circles of society, and extending from a family to a nation, and from a nation to the world. There is a cause which would lift up the individual to the performance of the duties of social life; there is another that would elevate the citizen for the good of his country; there is another that seeks to give strength and character to a nation, and still another that gives compacts and laws to nations, the greatest, the widest cause of all. The rights of nations are to be exercised for the good of nations. The universal good of nations consists in justice and integrity. In the name of this sacred cause, the cause of GOD, the prog