enjoy liberty on their paroles, within convenient districts, and have comfortable quarters; and the common soldiers shall be disposed in cantonments, open and extensive enough for air and exercise, and lodged in barracks as roomy and good as are provided by the party in whose power they are for its own troops. But if any officer shall break his parole by leaving the district so assigned him, or any other prisoner shall escape from the limits of his cantonment, after they shall have been designated to him, such individual, officer, or other prisoner, shall forfeit so much of the benefit of this article as provides for his liberty on parole or in cantonment. And if any officer so breaking his parole, or any common soldier so escaping from the limits assigned him, shall afterwards be found in arms, previously to his being regularly exchanged, the person so offending shall be `dealt with according to the established laws of war. The officers shall be daily furnished by the party in whose power they are with as many rations, and of the same articles, as are allowed, either in kind or by commutation, to officers of equal rank in its own army; and all others shall be daily furnished with such ration as is allowed to a common soldier in its own service: the value of all which supplies shall, at the close of the war, or at periods to be agreed upon between the respective commanders, be paid by the other party, on a mutual adjustment of accounts for subsistence of prisoners; and such accounts shall not be mingled with or set off against any others, nor the balance due on them be withheld, as a compensation or reprisal for any cause whatever, real or pretended. Each party shall be allowed to keep a commissary of prisoners, appointed by itself, with every cantonment of prisoners, in possession of the other; which commissary shall see the prisoners as often as he pleases; shall be allowed to receive, exempt from all duties or taxes, and to distribute, whatever comforts may be sent to them by their friends; and shall be free to transmit his reports in open letters to the party by whom he is employed.

"And it is declared that neither the pretence that war dissolves all treaties, nor any other whatever, shall be considered as annulling or suspending the solemn covenant contained in this article. On the contrary, the state of war is precisely that for which it is provided; and during which, its stipulations are to be as sacredly observed as the most acknowledged obligations under the law of nature or nations.

“ART. XXIII. This treaty shall be ratified by the president of the United States of America, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate thereof; and by the president of the Mexican republic, with the previous approbation of its General Congress; and the ratifications shall be exchanged in the city of Washington, or at the seat of government of Mexico, in four months from the date of the signature hereof, or sooner, if practicable.

"In faith whereof, we, the respective plenipotentiaries, have signed this treaty of peace, friendship, limits, and settlement; and have hereunto affixed our seals respectively. Done in quintuplicate, at the city of Guadalupe Hidalgo, on the second day of February, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and forty-eight.

“And whereas the said treaty, as amended, has been duly ratified on both parts, and the respective ratifications of the same were exchanged at Querétaro on the thirtieth day of May last, by Ambrose H. Sevier and Nathan Clifford, commissioners on the part of the government of the United States, and by Señor Don Louis de la Rosa, minister of relations of the Mexican republic, on the part of that government.

“Now, therefore, be it known, that I, JAMES K. Polk, president of the United States of America, have caused the said treaty to be made public, to the end that the same, and every clause and article thereof, may be observed and fulfilled with good faith by the United States and the citizens thereof.

"In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

[S. L.]

"Done at the city of Washington, this fourth day of July, one thousand eight hundred and forty-eight, and of the independence of the United States the seventy-third.

"By the President:

"JAMES BUCHANAN, Secretary of State."

"JAMES K. POLK.

26

BB.

The following is an extract from the message of President Polk, July 6, 1848, accompanying the treaty of peace:

"New Mexico and Upper California have been ceded by Mexico to the United States, and now constitute a part of our country. Embracing nearly ten degrees of latitude, lying adjacent to the Oregon Territory, and extending from the Pacific Ocean to the Rio Grande, a mean distance of nearly a thousand miles, it would be difficult to estimate the value of these possessions to the United States. They constitute of themselves a country large enough for a great empire, and their acquisition is second only in importance to that of Louisiana in 1803. Rich in mineral and agricultural resources, with a climate of great salubrity, they embrace the most important ports on the whole Pacific coast of the continent of North America. The possession of the ports of San Diego and Monterey and the Bay of San Francisco, will enable the United States to command the already valuable and rapidly increasing commerce of the Pacific. The number of our whale ships alone now employed in that sea exceeds seven hundred, requiring more than twenty thousand seamen to navigate them, while the capital invested in this particular branch of commerce is estimated at not less than forty millions of dollars. The excellent harbors of Upper California will, under our flag, afford security and repose to our commercial marine, and American mechanics will soon furnish ready means of ship-building and repair, which are now so much wanted in that distant sea.

66

"By the acquisition of these possessions, we are brought into immediate proximity with the west coast of America, from Cape Horn to the Russian possessions north of Oregon, with the islands of the Pacific Ocean, and by a direct voyage in steamers we will be in less than thirty days of Canton and other ports of China.

"In this vast region, whose rich resources are soon to be developed by American energy and enterprise, great must be the augmentation of our commerce, and with it new and profitable demands for mechanic labor in all its branches, and new and valuable markets for our manufactures and agricultural products."

СС.

EXTRACT FROM THE LETTER OF ACCEPTANCE
OF GENERAL CASS.

We make the following extract for the purpose of affording a good example to all partisans:

"No party, gentlemen, had ever higher motives for exertion, than has the great democratic party of the United States. With an abiding confidence in the rectitude of our principles, with an unshaken reliance upon the energy and wisdom of public opinion, and with the success which has crowned the administration of the government, when committed to its keeping, (and it has been so committed during more than three fourths of its existence,) what has been done is at once the reward of past exertion, and the motive for future, and, at the same time, a guaranty for the accomplishment of what we have to do. We cannot conceal from ourselves that there is a powerful party in the country, differing from us in regard to many of the fundamental principles of our government, and opposed to us in their practical application, which will strive as zealously as we shall to secure the ascendency of their principles, by securing the election of their candidate in the coming contest. That party is composed of our fellow-citizens, as deeply interested in the prosperity of our common country as we can be, and seeking as earnestly as we are to promote and perpetuate it. We shall soon present to the world the sublime spectacle of the election of a chief magistrste by twenty millions of people, without a single serious resistance to the laws, or the sacrifice of the life of one human being—and this, too, in the absence of all force but the moral force of our institutions; and if we should add to all this, an example of mutual respect for the motives of the contending parties, so that the contest might be carried on with that firmness and energy which accompany deep conviction, and with as little personal asperity as political divisions permit, we should do more for the great cause of human freedom throughout the world, than by any other tribute we could render to its value.

“We have a government founded by the will of all, responsible to the power of all, and administered for the good of all. The very first article in the democratic creed teaches that the people are competent to govern themselves; it is, indeed, rather an axiom than

an article of political faith. From the days of General Hamilton to our days, the party opposed to us, of whose principles he was the great exponent, if not the founder, while it has changed its name, has preserved essentially its identity of character; and the doubt he entertained and taught of the capacity of man for selfgovernment, has exerted a marked influence upon its action and opinions. Here is the very starting-point of the difference between the two great parties which divide our country. All other differences are but subordinate and auxiliary to this, and may, in fact, be resolved into it. Looking with doubt upon the issue of self-government, one party is prone to think the public authority should be strengthened, and to fear any change, lest that change might weaken the necessary force of the government; while the other, strong in its convictions of the intelligence and virtue of the people, believes that original power is safer than delegated, and that the solution of the great problem of good government consists in governing with the least force, and leaving individual action as free from restraint as is compatible with the preservation of the social system, thereby securing to each all the freedom which is not essential to the wellbeing of the whole.

"As a party, we ought not to mistake the signs of the times; but should bear in mind that this is an age of progress of advancement in all the elements of intellectual power, and in the opinions of the world. The general government should assume no powers. It should exercise none which have not been clearly granted by the parties to the federal compact. We ought to construe the Constitution strictly, according to the received and sound principles of the Jefferson school. But while rash experiments should be deprecated, if the government is stationary in its principles of action, and refuses to accommodate its measures within its constitutional sphere — cautiously, indeed, but wisely and cheerfully to the advancing sentiments and necessities of the age, it will find its moral force impaired, and the public will determine to do what the public authority itself should readily do, when the indications of popular sentiment are clear and clearly expressed."