enter heaven. Is it strange, then, that people under such a belief should be patient under worldly sufferings? The whole history of the Mexican Revolution will show, that where the priest excited opposition to the mother state, it was for the purpose of concentrating more power in themselves, to do which they invariably made use of their holiness as the surer and more effectual means. If the policy of the Church, as it has the power to prevent it, is thus opposed to change, where is the remedy? Certainly not in those whose souls have to reach heaven through that channel. The history of many nations in time past answers the question; some other people, more skilled in the arts of war and the science of government, ambitious of the possession of so choice a portion of the earth, will extend their arms and government over it; for where there is so much to tempt national cupidity, a pretext for war is never wanting. Here this question presents itself.

Is the present moral and political condition of Mexico already so low as to justify such a measure?

The present degraded state of Mexico is perhaps a sufficient answer to this question; but in this age, [387] when the "moral opinion of the world" is so frequently talked of, and possibly more respected than formerly, it would require a reasonable pretext in a foreign nation to assume such a position.

Great Britain, for instance, would, upon the refusal of Mexico to pay her sixty millions of debt to English subjects, and to extend a full protection to the hundred millions of English manufacturing and mining capital, have a better pretext to extend her laws over Mexico than she had in most of her East India conquest, or in forcing opium upon the Chinese.

France, perhaps, would have as good a pretext, if the late arbitrary act of the Mexican government against the French subject is in contravention of existing treaties, as it is grossly violative of that comitas inter gentes which should ever exist.

The national vicinage between the United States and Mexico, that great and leading neighbourhood policy which has the right to keep off a stranger who possibly might be troublesome, certainly would give the former the right, if it did not make it her imperative duty, to possess herself of that which a stranger might. This policy, called "American," belongs as much to the New, as that called the "balance of power," does to the Old World.

If a decent regard for the "moral opinion of the world" be wanting by other nations to make such a conquest of Mexico, it is not so wanting on the part of Texas; a nation, though small at present, [388] but whose destiny will extend south and west as surely as that has been the course of former conquest.

All history teaches that the general course of conquest has been from north to south. It was so in the days of Tamerlane, of the Goths and Vandals, and,