Puslapio vaizdai
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CHAPTER II.

ANNEXATION Continued. Justness of the act toward Mexico. The right of Mexico to sovereignty over Texas. If possessed at all after her revolution of 1834-35, lost afterwards by her neglect to enforce it. Her claim in effect abandoned. Texas became independent of right by the Mexican revolution of 1334-35. Expediency of annexation. Annexation to be considered here only so far as it effected our relations with Mexico.

IN considering this act of our government, the question first arises, was the measure just toward Mexico. That republic contended that Texas was an integral part of her territory, a rebellious province which she intended to subdue; and she denounced the annexation as a violation by the United States of their neutrality and treaty stipulations, as a national robbery, and as one of the greatest outrages recorded in history.

We believe that this claim and charge were entirely without foundation; that in this proceeding the United States did not violate their neutrality or their treaty, nor interfere in the least with any right of Mexico. This we shall endeavor to show.

The common consent of mankind has fixed a limitation to national claims, and assigned a period to the right of re-conquest. It has become a law of nations, that if a claim of sovereignty is not prosecuted with adequate means, and within a reasonable period, the government asserting it must suffer the consequences of its inaction. Other nations have a right to regard its pretension as abandoned, and to consider any subsequent attempt to enforce it as a wrongful invasion. Mexico herself furnishes an illustration in point. Spain refused to acknowledge her independence for more than fifteen years after its establishment. She protested against its recognition by other powers, declaring her determination to re-conquer her lost possessions. But the world treated her in all respects as independent de jure, and the United States in 1825,'27 and '29, considered her competent to convey a perfect title to Texas. The last was thought to be a favorable occasion to renew the offer for the purchase of that territory, as Mexico would need the purchase money in resisting "the Spanish invasion."

Let us apply this well-established principle to the present case. At the time of the annexation Texas had been independent of Mex

ico for nine years. Her independence had been recognized by the United States, England, France, Belgium, and Holland. Mexico had protested against these acts, had declared her determination to re-conquer that state, and had waged, on paper, a furious war against it. But, with a single exception, Texas remained all that time in undisturbed tranquility, doing "all those acts and things which independent states may of right do," attracting by her equal laws, her genial climate and fertile soil emigrants from all parts of the world, developing her resources, and increasing in strength and stability.

The exception to which we have alluded occurred in the year 1842, when Mexico sent three marauding expeditions into Texas to pillage her defenceless border settlements. The first party of seven hundred took the village of San Antonio. The second, numbering about eight hundred, attacking a company of some two hundred emigrants, were defeated and driven out of the country. The third, a motley collection of nearly thirteen hundred men, took San Antonio a second time by surprise. Pursued by a small body of Texans under General Somerville, they hastily retreated, car

rying away, however, the judges and attendants of the court then in session, with other unarmed and peaceful citizens into captivity After the battle of San Jacinto, these three barbarous, plundering expeditions, not one of which remained in the country longer than eight days, were the only hostile attacks which Mexico had made on the territory of Texas.

Our secretary of state, Mr. Webster, says in 1842: "From the battle of San Jacinto the war was at an end." "Mexico may choose to consider Texas as a rebellious province, but the world has been obliged to take a very dif ferent view of the matter." "Texas has exhibited the same external signs of national independence as Mexico herself." "Practically free and independent, acknowledged as a political sovereignty by the principal powers of the world, no hostile foot finding rest within her territory for six or seven years, and Mexico herself refraining for all that period from any further attempt to re-establish her own authority, the United States must consider Texas as an independent sovereignty as much as Mexico." "How long, let it be asked, in the judgment of Mexico herself,” he inquires, "is the fact of actual independence to be held

of no avail against an avowed purpose of future re-conquest ?"

Three years of continued inaction had succeeded the six or seven to which Mr. Webster alludes. For nine successive years, then, Mexico had not made a single attempt to establish her claim; for the incursions before described were entirely inadequate and useless, and evidently not designed as attempts to effect any such object. They cannot be allowed to have had any higher purpose than injury and plunder. Certainly, if the claim of Mexico could not then be considered as abandoned, and the rightful independence of Texas as established, it would be very difficult to say at what period such a judgment would have been warranted.

All publicists agree, that a nation's right to lost possessions ceases when all probable hope of recovery is at an end. And this is a reasonable and just rule; because the rights of individuals and states cannot be suffered to remain suspended, while an unreasonable nation persists in indulging its spleen, and in exhibiting its obstinacy. Now Mexico was notoriously unable to re-conquer Texas. She was asserting a claim, the enforcement of which, always hopeless, had grown for nine years more

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