moment of throwing off the Spanish yoke, gave a noble testimony of her loyalty to free principles, by decreeing That no person thereafter should be born a slave, or introduced as such into the Mexican States; that all slaves then held should receive stipulated wages, and be subjected to no punishment but on trial and judgment by the magistrate.' The subsequent acts of the government carried out fully these constitutional provisions. It is matter of grief and humiliation, that the emigrants from this country, whilst boasting of superior civilization, refused to second this honourable policy, intended to set limits to one of the greatest social evils. Slaves were brought into Texas with their masters, from the neighbouring states of this country. One mode of evading the laws was to introduce slaves under formal indentures for long periods, in some cases, it is said, for ninety-nine years. By a decree of the State Legislature of Coahuila and Texas all indentures for a longer period than ten years were annulled, and provision was made for the freedom of children born during this apprenticeship. This settled invincible purpose of Mexico to exclude slavery from her limits created as strong a purpose to annihilate her authority in Texas. By this prohibition, Texas was virtually shut against emigration from the southern and western portions of this country, and it is well known that the eyes of the south and west had for some time been turned to this province, as a new market for slaves, as a new field for slave-labour, and as a vast accession of political power to the slave-holding states. That such views were prevalent, we know; for, nefarious as they are, they found their way into the public prints. The project of dismembering a neighbouring republic, that slaveholders and slaves might overspread a region which had been consecrated to a free population, was discussed in newspapers as coolly as if it were a matter of obvious right and unquestionable humanity. A powerful interest was thus created for severing from Mexico her distant province. We have here a powerful incitement to the Texan revolt, and another explanation of the eagerness with which men and money were thrown from the United States into that region, to carry on the war of revolution.

"I proceed to another circumstance, which helped to determine or at least to hasten the insurrection; and that was the disappointment of the Texans, in their efforts to obtain for themselves an organization as a separate state. Texas and Coahuila had hitherto formed a single state. But the colonists, being a minority in the joint Legislature, found themselves thwarted in their plans. Impatient of this restraint, and probably suffering at times from a union which gave the superiority to others, they prepared for themselves a constitution, by which they were to be erected into a separate state, neglecting in their haste the forms prescribed by the Mexican law. This instrument they forwarded

to the capital, for the sanction of the General Congress, by whom it was immediately rejected. Its informality was a sufficient reasons for its finding no better reception; but the omission of all provision to secure the country against slavery was a more serious obstacle to its ratification. The irritation of the Texans was great. Once invested with the powers of a state, they would not have found it difficult, in their remoteness from the capital, and in the unsettled state of the nation, to manage their affairs in their own way. A virtual, independence might have been secured, and the laws of Mexico evaded with impunity. Their exasperation was increased by the imprisonment of the agent who had carried the instrument into Mexico, and who had advised them, in an intercepted letter, to take matters into their own hands, or ti. organize a state government without authority from the national Congress. Thus denied the privilege of a separate state, and threatened with new attempts on the part of the general government to enforce the laws, they felt that the critical moment had arrived; and, looking abroad for help, resolved to take the chances of a conflict with the crippled power of Mexico.

"Such were the chief excitements to the revolt. Undoubtedly, the Texans were instigated by the idea of wrongs, as well as by mercenary . hopes. But had they yielded true obedience to the country, of which they had of their own free will become part; had they submitted to the laws relating to the revenue, to the sale of lands, and to slavery, the wrongs of which they complained might never have been experienced, or might never have been construed into a plea for insurrection. The great motives to revolt, on which I have insisted, are so notorious, that it is wonderful that any among us could be cheated into sympathy with the Texan cause, as the cause of freedom. Slavery and fraud lay at its very foundation. It is notorious, that land speculators, slaveholders, and selfish adventurers, were among the foremost to proclaim and engage in the crusade for Texan liberties.' From the hands of these we are invited to receive a province, torn from a country to which we have given pledges of amity and peace.--In these remarks, I do not, of course, intend to say, that every invader of Texas was carried thither by selfish motives. Some, I doubt not, were impelled by a generous interest in what bore the name of liberty; and more by that natural sympathy which incites a man to take part with his countrymen against a stranger, without stopping to ask whether they are right or wrong. But the motives which rallied the great efficient majority round the standard of Texas were such as have been exposed, and should awaken any sentiment but respect.

"Having considered the motives of the revolution, I proceed to inquire, how was it accomplished? The answer to this question will

show more fully the criminality of the enterprise. The Texans, we have seen; were a few thousands, as unfit for sovereignty as one of our towns; and, if left to themselves, must have utterly despaired of achieving independence. They looked abroad; and to whom did they look? To any foreign state? To the government under which they had formerly lived? No; their whole reliance was placed on selfish individuals in a neighbouring republic at peace with Mexico. They looked wholly to private individuals, to citizens of this country, to such among us, as, defying the laws of the land, and hungry for sudden gain, should be lured by the scent of this mighty prey, and should be ready to stain their hands with blood for spoil. They held out a country, as a prize to the reckless, lawless, daring, avaricious, and trusted to the excitements of intoxicated imagination and insatiable cupidity to supply them with partners in their scheme of violence.

"By whom has Texas been conquered? By the colonists? By the hands which raised the standard of revolt? By foreign governments espousing their cause? No; it has been conquered by your and my countrymen,-by citizens of the United States, in violation of our laws and of the laws of nations. We, we have filled the ranks which have wrested Texas from Mexico. In the army of eight hundred men who won the victory which scattered the Mexican force, and made its chief a prisoner, not more than fifty were citizens of Texas, having griev ances of their own to seek relief from on that field.' The Texans, in this warfare, are little more than a name-a cover, under which selfish adventurers from another country have prosecuted their work of plunder.

"Some crimes, by their magnitude, have a touch of the sublime; and to this dignity the seizure of Texas by our citizens is entitled. Modern times furnish no example of individual rapine on so grand a scale. It is nothing less than the robbery of a realm. The pirate seizes a ship. The colonists and their coadjutors can satisfy themselves with nothing short of an empire. They have left their Anglo-Saxon ancestors behind them. Those barbarians conformed to the maxims of their age, to the rude code of nations in time of thickest heathenish darkness. They invaded England under their sovereigns, and with the sanction of the gloomy religion of the North. But it is in a civilized age, and amidst refinement of manners; it is amidst the lights of science, and the teachings of Christianity, amidst expositions of the law of nations and enforcements of the law of universal love, amidst institutions of religion, learning, and humanity, that the robbery of Texas has found its instruments. It is from a free, well-ordered, enlightened, Christian country that hordes have gone forth, in open day, to perpetrate this mighty wrong.

"Let me now ask, are the United States prepared to receive from these hands the gift of Texas? In annexing it to this country, shall we not appropriate to ourselves the fruits of a rapine which we ought to have suppressed? We certainly should shrink from a proposition to receive a piratical state into our confederacy. And of whom does Texas consist? Very much of our own citizens, who have won a country by waging war against a foreign nation, to which we owed protection against such assaults. Does it consist with national honour, with national virtue, to receive to our embrace men who have prospered by crimes which we were bound to reprobate and repress ?

"Had this country resisted with its whole power the lawlessness of its citizens; had these, notwithstanding such opposition, succeeded in extorting from Mexico a recognition of independence; and were their sovereignty acknowledged by other nations, we should stand acquitted, in the sight of the civilized world, of participating in their crime, were considerations of policy to determine us to admit them into our union. Unhappily the United States have not discharged the obligations of a neutral state. They have suffered, by a culpable negligence, the violation of Mexican territory by their citizens; and if now, in the midst of the conflict, whilst Mexico yet threatens to enforce her claims, they should proceed to incorporate Texas with themselves, they would involve themselves, before all nations, in the whole infamy of the revolt. The United States have not been just to Mexico. Our citizens did not steal singly, silently, in disguise into that land. Their purpose of dismembering Mexico, and attaching her distant province to this country, was not wrapt in mystery. It was proclaimed in our public prints. Expeditions were openly fitted out within our borders for the Texan war. Troops were organised, equipped, and marched for the scene of action. Advertisements for volunteers, to be enrolled and conducted to Texas at the expense of that territory, were inserted in our newspapers. The government indeed issued its proclamation forbidding these hostile preparations; but this was a dead letter. Military companies, with officers, and standards, in defiance of proclamations and in the face of day, directed their steps to the revolted province. We had, indeed, an army near the frontiers of Mexico. Did it turn back these invaders of a land with which we were at peace? not its presence give confidence to the revolters? struction of our conduct shall we force on the world, if we proceed, especially at this moment, to receive into our Union the territory, which, through our neglect, has fallen a prey to lawless invasion? Are we willing to take our place among robber-states? As a people, have we no self-respect? Have we no reverence for national morality? Have

On the contrary, did After this, what con

we no feeling of responsibility to other nations, and to Him by whom the fate of nations is disposed?

"Having unfolded the argument against the annexation of Texas, from the criminality of the revolt, I proceed to a second very solemn consideration, namely, that by this act, our country will enter on a career of encroachment, war, and crime, and will merit and incur the punishment and woe of aggravated wrong-doing. The seizure of Texas will not stand alone. It will darken our future history. It will be linked by an iron necessity to long-continued deeds of rapine and blood. Ages may not see the catastrophe of the tragedy, the first scene of which we are so ready to enact. It is strange that nations should be so much more rash than individuals; and this, in the face of experience, which has been teaching, from the beginning of society, that of all precipitate and criminal deeds, those perpetrated by nations are the most fruitful of misery.

"Did this country know itself, or were it disposed to profit by selfknowledge, it would feel the necessity of laying an immediate curb on its passion for extended territory. It would not trust itself to new acquisitions. It would shrink from the temptation to conquest. are a restless people, prone to encroachment, impatient of the ordinary laws of progress, less anxious to consolidate and perfect than to extend our institutions, more ambitious of spreading ourselves over a wide space, than of diffusing beauty and fruitfulness over a narrower field. We boast of our rapid growth, forgetting that throughout nature noble growths are slow. Our people throw themselves beyond the bounds of civilization, and expose themselves to relapses into a semi-barbarous state, under the impulse of wild imagination, and for the name of great possessions. Perhaps there is no people on the face of the earth on whom the ties of local attachment sit so loosely. Even the wandering tribes of Scythia are bound to one spot, the graves of their fathers; but the homes and graves of our fathers detain us feebly. The known and familiar is often abandoned for the distant and untrodden; and sometimes the untrodden is not less eagerly desired because belonging to others. We owe this spirit, in a measure, to our descent from men who left the old world for the new,-the seats of ancient cultivation, for a wilderness, and who advanced by driving before them the old occupants of the soil. To this spirit we have sacrificed justice and humanity; and through its ascendancy, the records of this young nation are stained with atrocities at which communities grown grey in corruption might blush,

"Texas is a country conquered by our citizens; and the annexation of it to our Union will be the beginning of conquests, which, unless arrested and beaten back by a just and kind Providence, will stop only