blanket ready armed and spurred, stows away his couple of pounds of beef, either with or without bread, as the case may be, and is ready to meet the consequences of the day, be they pleasant or otherwise.

These are the nations which have been eight years warring against each other. Mexico, with her seven millions of people, whose course has been unproductive of favourable result in this war, and whose tendency has been more downward than at any former period in her history, is still pertinacious in her vain desire of reconquest; while Texas, with her twenty thousand souls, threw off the yoke - has increased her population eight or ten fold - multiplied her exports beyond her imports - has a surplus of corn and beef vastly more than the wants of her people, and cheaper than in any other portion of the civilized earth. With this rapidly-growing power, already strong, and bidding so soon to wield a giant's strength, her course has been temporizing and weak beyond measure. When Mexico has vainly threatened Texas with annihilation - when she has violated every principle of civilized warfare by a catalogue of cruelties the most unparalleled - when she has, time after time, plundered and burned our towns and [391] farmhouses - when she has kidnapped our citizens and carried them into foreign bondage - when she has offered up in cold blood our best citizens to satiate the bloody vengeance of a despot, it has been the misfortune of Texas, the most of this time, to have in her executive chair one who had neither the energy nor the will to punish these cruelties. When the nation called upon President Houston to do so, she was answered in deception, and by him the enemy were falsely told that "we have no means of prosecuting the war." Then comes his denunciation of his gallant countrymen of Mier; then his proclamation of piracy against his gallant navy; and, lastly, his thieving copartnership with Colonel Snively's expedition. This executive, without either the energy or the will to do that which the honour and interest of the country required, instead of boldly meeting the enemy and punishing "his aggressions," commences a compound negotiation of diplomatic frauds as disgraceful to the nation as they were stupid in their author.

At the same time that the Texas executive was begging the mediation of Great Britain, whose price was beyond his gift,* he had commissioners beyond [392] the Rio Grande, entering into a disgraceful and treasonable armistice with Mexico; and while he would promise benefits to other nations, the public will of his countrymen, which he could neither control nor resist, offered political union to the confederated Republics of the North.§3

It is not my purpose to argue the good or evil which might result from such a union. It is sufficient that an immense majority of my countrymen desired it,

* The "abolition of slavery" was, then, the price, and however covertly the Texas executive may have connived at the measure, he dare not openly advocate it. More recently the British government has varied her conditions of mediation, and it is but a variation. She seems just now tenacious of the separate nationality of Texas,