that your government became incidentally a party to it - your chargé d'affaires having originated it.

The undersigned do not rest their grounds for the interference of your excellency in their behalf upon the foregoing showing alone. They appeal to you, and the whole corps diplomatique, as conservators of international law. Diplomatic agents, clothed with ministerial powers, are called ministers to the different courts to which they are sent, which term, conjoined to their official duties, implies the possession of judicial authority.

If this position be true, you are bound to notice all infractions of the [462] great law of nations, either in a state of peace or in the turmoils of war. It is your prerogative to control and regulate the operations of the latter state when not conducted according to the principles of humanity and the common mild usages of civilized nations.

In the undersigned and their unfortunate comrades you have a case which solicits the controlling influence of foreign ministers. The humane maxims of international law, the acknowledged customs of civilized nations, have all alike been violated and disregarded in our cruel treatment and unjust detention.

When taken at Mier, under treaty stipulations guarantying to us safety and consideration, we were marched on foot, through sunshine and through storm, and a portion of the way handcuffed in couples, under the tauntings and lash of merciless Mexican soldiery. In the villages and towns through which we passed, instead of being treated with the kind courtesy usually extended by generous captors to vanquished enemies, we were received amid the hisses and maledictions of the infuriated rabble, with placards staring us in the face, commemorating the defeat of the Texian adventurers and robbers, as they termed us.

The bloody tragedies enacted on the road the undersigned refrain from recapitulating; their minds shrink with horror from the recital. Language is inadequate to express the deep agony of the heart in the bare review of such inhuman acts. Such has been our treatment on the way to Mexico, and the same harshness still continues.

Only a few days since, one of our men, a Lieutenant Clopton, returned from the hospital in which he had been confined for five or six weeks from the wounds and bruises inflicted upon him by a large bludgeon in the hands of Captain Arroya, commandant of the castle. A few weeks ago, a pale and sickly boy was so severely beaten by the same weapon, in the hands of the same officer, as to be compelled to carry his arm in a sling for some time. In a word, we are miserably fed, badly clothed, and worked like beasts of burden. Our hard fate is rendered yet more intolerable by the fact that neither of the contending parties appear to make any active demonstrations to bring the war to a close, but rather prefer becoming the clients of Great Britain, the United States, and France. The time necessary to render their mediation effective must necessarily be long; and during this state of nominal peace we have suffered, and still continue to suffer, all the hardships of an actual state of warfare.