The Sun.
London, England, 1846-12-30 00:00:00

pendenee of the republic of Texas." It is true he was
then a prisoner of war, but it is equally true that he
had failed to reconquer Texas, and had met with signal
defeat; that his authority had not been revoked, and
that by virtue of this treaty he obtained his personal
release. By it hostilities were suspended, and the army
which had invaded Texas under his command, re-
turned, in pursuance of this arrangement, unmolested to
Mexico.
From the day that the battle of San Jacinto was
fought till the present hour, Mexico has never possessed
the power to reconquer Texas. In the language of the
Secretary of State of the United States, in a dispatch to
our Minister in Mexico, under date of the Bth of July,
1842, "Mexico may have chosen to consider, and may
still choose to consider, Texas as having been at all
times since 1835, and as still continuing, a rebellious
province, but the world has been obliged to take a very
different view of the matter. From the time of the
battle of San Jacinto, in April, 1836, to the present
moment, Texas has exhibited the same external signs
of national independence as Mexico herself, and with
quite as much stability of government. Practically free
and independent, acknowledged as a political sove-
reignty by the principal Powers of the world, no hostile
foot finding rest within her territory for six or seven
years, and Mexico herself refraining for all that period
from any further attempt to re-establish her own autho-
rity over that territory, it cannot but be surprising to
find Mr. de Bocanegra" (the Secretary of Foreign Af-
fairs of Mexico) "complaining that for that whole period
citizens of the United States, or its Government, have
been favouring the rebels of Texas, and supplying them
with vessels, ammunition, and money, as if the war for
the reduction of the province of Texas had been con-
stantly prosecuted by Mexico, and her success pre-
vented by these influences from abroad." In the same
dispatch the Secretary of State affirms that " since
1837 the United States have regarded Texas as an in-
dependent sovereignty as much as "Mexico ; and that
trade and commerce with citizens of a Government at
war with Mexico cannot, on that account, be regarded
as an intercourse by which assistance and succour are
given to Mexican rebels. The whole current of Mr.
de Bocanegra's remarks runs in the same di-
rection as if the independence of Texas had
not been acknowledged. It has been acknowledged
—it was acknowledged in 1837, against the remon-
strance and protest of Mexico; and most of the acts of
any importance, of which Mr. de Bocanegra complains,
flow necessarily from that recognition. He speaks of
Texas as still being an integral part of the territory of
the Mexican Republic;' but he cannot but understand
that the United States do not so regard it. The real
complaint of Mexico, therefore, is, in substance, neither
more nor less than a complaint against the recognition
of Texan independence. It may be thought rather late
to repeat that complaint, and not quite just to confine
it to the United States, to the exemption of England,
France and Belgium, unless the United States, having
been the first to acknowledge the independence of
Mexico herself, are to be blamed for setting an example
for the recognition of that of Texas." And he added,
that " the constitution, public treaties, and the laws
oblige the President to regard Texas as an independent
state, and its territory as no part of the territory of
Mexico." Texas had been an independent state,
with an organised government, defying the power
of Mexico to overthrow or reconquer her, for more
than ten years before Mexico commenced the present
war against the United States. Texas had given
such evidence to the world of her ability to main-
tain her separate existence as an independent nation,
that she had been formally recognised as such, not only
by the United States, but by several of the principal
Powers of Europe. These Powers had entered into
treaties of amity, commerce, and navigation with her.
They had received and accredited her Ministers and
other diplomatic agents at their respective courts, and
they had commissioned Ministers and diplomatic agents
on their part to the Government of Texas. If Mexico,
notwithstanding all this, and her utter inability to sub-
due or reconquer Texas, still stubbornly refused to re-
cognise her as an independent nation, she was none the
less so on that account. Mexico herself had been recog-
nised as an independent nation by the United States and
by other Powers many years before Spain, of which,
before her revolution, she had been a colony, would agree
to recognise her as such ; and yet Mexico was at that
time, in the estimation of the civilised world, and in
fact, none the less an independent Power because Spain
still claimed her as a colony. If Spain had continued
until the present period to assert that Mexico was
one of her colonies in rebellion against her, this
would not have made her so, or changed the fact of
her independent existence. Texas, at the period of
her annexation to the United States, bore the
same relation to Mexico that Mexico had borne to Spain
for many years before Spain acknowledged her inde-
pendence, with this important difference, that before the
annexation of Texas to the United States was consum-
mated, Mexico herself, by a formal act of her Govern-
ment, had acknowledged the independence of Texas as
a nation. It is true that, in the act of recognition, she
prescribed a condition, which she had no power or
authority to impose, that Texas should not annex herself
to any other power; but this could not detract in any de-
gree from the recognition which Mexico then made of
her actual independence. Upon this plain statement of
facts, it is absurd for Mexico to allege, as a pretext for
commencing hostilities against the United States, that
Texas is still a part of her territory.
But there are those who, conceding all this to be true,
assume the ground that the true western boundary of
Texas is the Nueces, instead of the Rio Grande; and that,
therefore, iu marching our army to the east bank of the
latter river, we passed the Texan line, and invaded the
territories of Mexico. A simple statement of facts, known
to exist, will conclusively refute such an assumption.
Texas, as ceded to the United States by France in
1803 has been always claimed as extending west to the
Rio Grande, or Rio Bravo. This fact is established by
the authority of our most eminent statesmen at a period
when the question was as well, if not better, understood
than it is at present. During Mr. Jefferson's adminis-
tration, Messrs. Monroe and Pinkney, who had been sent
on a special mission to Madrid, charged, among °tinr
things, with the adjustment of boundary between the
two countries, in a note addressed to the Spanish Minis-
ter of Foreign Affairs, under date of the 28th ofJanuary,
1805, assert that the boundaries of Louisiana, as ceded
to the United States by France, "are the river Perdido
on the east, and the river Bravo on the west ;" and
they add, that " the facts and principles which justify
this conclusion are so satisfactory to our Government as
to convince it that the United States have not a better
right to the island of New Orleans, under the cession
referred to, than they have to the whole district of terri-
tory which is above described."

Down to the conclusion of the Florida treaty, in
February, 1819, by which this territory was ceded to
Spain, the United States asserted and maintained their
territorial rights to this extent. In the month of June,
1818, during Mr. Monroe's administration, information
having beenireceived that a number of Foreign adventurers
had landed at,Galveston, with the avowed purpose of form-
ing a settlement in that vicinity, a special messenger was
dispatched by the Government of the United States, with
instructions from the Secretary of State to warn them to
desist should they be found there "or any other place
north of the Rio Bravo, and within the territory claimed
by the United States." He was instructed, should they
be found in the country north of that river, to make
known to them " the surprise with which the President
had seen possession thus taken, without authority from
the United States, of a place within their territorial
limits, and upon which no lawful settlement can be made
without their sanction." He was instructed to call upon
them to " avow under what national authority they pro-
fess to act," and to give them due warning " that the
place is within the United States, who will suffer no per-
manent settlement to be made there, under any authority
other than their own." As late as the Bth of July, 1842,
the Secretary of State of the United States, in a note
addressed to our Minister in Mexico, maintains that, by
the Florida treaty of 1819, the territory as far west as
the Rio Grande, was confirmed to Spain. In that note
he states that " by the Treaty of the 22d of February,
1819, between the United States and Spain, the Sabine
was adopted as the line of boundary between the two
Powers. Up to that period, no considerable colonization
had been effected in Texas ; but the territory between
the Sabine and the Rio Grande being confirmed to Spain
by the treaty, applications were made to that power for
grants of land, and such grants, or permissions of settle-
ment were in fact made by the authorities of citizens of
the United States, proposing to emigrate to Texas in
numerous families before the declaration of independence
by Mexico."
The Texas, which was ceded to Spain by the Florida
treaty of 1819, embraced all the country now claimed by
the state of Texas between the Nueces aid the Rio
Grande. The republic of Texas always claimed the
river as her western boundary, and in her treaty made
with Santa Anna, in May, 1836, ho recognised it as
such. By the constitution which Texas adopted in
March, 1836, senatorial and representative districts
were organised, extending west of the Nueces. The
Congress of Texas, on the 19th of December, 1836,
passed " An Act to define the boundaries of the Re-
public of Texas, in which they declared the Rio Grand.
from its mouth to its source to be their boundary, and
by the said Act they extended their " civil and political
jurisdiction" over the country up to that boundary. During
a period of more than nine years, which intervened be-
tween the adoption of her constitution and her annexa-
tion as one of the United States of our Union, Texas
asserted and exercised many acts of sovereignty and ju-
risdiction over the territory and inhabitants west of the
Nueces. She organised and defended the limits of coun-
tries extending to the Rio Grande. She established
courts of justic?, and extended her judicial system over
the territory. She established a custom-house, and col-
lected duties, and also post-offices and post-roads in it.
She established a land office, and issued numerous grants
for land, within its limits. A senator and a representa-
tive residing in it were elected to the Congress of the re-
public, and served as such before the Act of annexation
took place. In both the Congress and Convention of Texas,
which gave their assent to the terms of annexation to
the United States, proposed by our Congress, were re-
presentatives residing west of the Nueces, who took part
in the act of anaexation itself. This was the Texas
which, by the act of our Congress of the 29th of Decem-
ber, 1845, was admitted as one of the States of our
Union. That the Congress of the United States under-
stood the state of Texas which they admitted into the
union to extend beyond the Nueces, is apparent from
the fact that on the 31st of a cember, 1845, only two
days after the act of admission, they passed a law "to
establish a collection district in the state of Texas," by
which they created a port of delivery at Corpus Christi,
situated west of the Nueces, and being the same point
at which the Texas custom-house, under ,the laws of
that republic, had been located, and directed that a sur-
veyor to collect the revenue should be appointed for
that port by the President, by and with the advice
and consent of the Senate. A surveyor was accord
ingly nominated, and confirmed by the Senate, and
has been ever since in the performance of his duties.
All those acts of the republic of Te;tas and of our