capital in twelve days are superior to their present means of communication with the capital of Mexico in thirty? We say not. This age has merged distance in time, and the people of the Rio Grande at present are as near neighbours to the capital of the United States as Boston was to Philadelphia at the promulgation of President Washington's inaugural message to the first Congress.[407]

Should annexation not take place, this will be done, and sooner done by Texas. Both the government of the United States and Texas are founded upon the same political code. The same political sentiment enters into each. They have the same common origin - the same language, laws, and religion - the same pursuits and interests; and though they may remain independent of each other as to government, they are identified in weal and wo - they will flourish side by side pari passu, and the blight which affects the one will surely reach the other. The unity of the Texian government, her immediate contiguity to Mexico, and her multiplied causes of quarrel therefrom, will cause her arms to extend south and west sooner than would those of the United States. In the later government of such a confederacy of republics there are many heads to consult and many interests to accommodate. These numerous sectional interests, whether real or fancied, must be accommodated, and by an action necessarily slower than that of Texas.

As I have said before, it was not my purpose to discuss, at present, the question of annexation. That has been often and ably done, and much has been said on both sides; but as a Texian, feeling a proper degree of pride in her nationality, and an absorbing interest in her welfare, whatever may be her destiny, duty requires me to deny a position which seems to have grown up with the argument, to wit, that most or all the advantages of union would result to Texas.[408]

If Texas has been the applicant for this political copartnership, she has not been insensible to the fact that she would enter the firm as a junior partner, bringing with her into the concern more than her pro rata of capital; she has not been insensible to the fact that she voluntarily abandons her own freedom to take a junior position in that mighty national confederation which will give her but a feeble voice in the general direction of affairs; she has not been blind to the fact that, by entering into the union, she makes herself a party to the many quarrels of conflicting interest which perpetually excites that great national family; that by this step she voluntarily leaps into the questions of bank or no bank; of free trade, high tariff, and protection; of abolition and disunion; she is fully aware that she gives to the Northern States all the benefits of her carrying trade, to the injury of her own citizens, and taxes herself with northern manufactures at least thirty per cent. higher than she could procure like articles from other nations; she is not insensible to the fact that after this current year a ten per cent. ad valorem tariff, without direct taxation, will be ample for