The Sun.
London, England, 1845-01-15 00:00:00

4

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 15, 1845.

Together with the second and " special " Message
of Mr. President TYLER on the subject of the tone
assumed by the Minister of Mexico, in his corre-
spondence with the Minister of the United States,
accredited to that Power, we yesterday published,
from the New York Herald, a curious article headed
" European Interference in American Affairs." It
will lee remembered that this correspondence regarded
what Mr. TYLER is pleased to call " the extraordi-
nary and highly offensive language which the
_lexicon Government has thought proper to employ
in reply to the remonstrance of the (United States')
Executive, through Mr. SHANNON, against the renewal
of the war with Texas, whilst the ' question' of
annexation' was pending before (the United
States') Congress and the people." What the
nature of the Mexican Minister's language may
have been is one question. What the proceedings
have been, in reference to Mexico, and of the Ame-
rican Legislature and Executive, is another and very
different one. The first involves considerations merely
of the good or bad taste with which Senor Itteoe
may have given utterance to the views entertained by
his Government in relation to the underhanded in-
trigues of Mr. TYLER with certain Mexican sub-
jects, for the dismemberment of a large section of the
Mexican empire. The second question is nothing
less than one of absolute wholesale spoliation, by the
stronger upon the weaker of the two Governments
concerned, in appropriating, under the mockery of a
Legislative sanction from the representa-
tives of its own population, of that dismem-
bered territory, and incorporating it into its own
dominions, in open defiance of the protests and recla-
mations of the despoiled State. Is Mexico an in-
dependent Government, or a federal member of the
United States, or a tributary and dependent
Power in relation to them ? If she were a
federal member of the United States, she would
be justified in resenting, if she thought proper,
the proposed annexation of Texas to the Uuion. If
she were a tributary and a dependent, then, indeed,
her repudiation of the project, " in language unknown
to the courtesy of diplomatic intercourse, and offen-
sive, in the highest degree to the (United States')
Government and people," might properly have called
for and sufficiently justified Mr. TYLER'S violent
philippic against a bearing and a tone that independent
nations only can he permitted to assume. But Mexico
is an independent nation. All the cunning and
trickery developed in the PRESIDENT'S Message cannot
grapple with or escape from this fact. So far from it,
he complains that " she has added insult to injury," in
her dealings with the American Minister, charged to
remonstrate with the Mrxican Government "in re-
spectful though decided terms"—by " not even deign-
ing, fur months together, to return any answer to
such representations;" and by other acts, both of
commission and omission, which all combine to prove
at least this :—that any defect, either in her
character of independence, or any feebleness of tone
in her mode of vindicating it—has never once
occurred to the American Minister or the meddling
President to suggest. Now, Mexico being thus, in
fact, de jure, and, by the acknowledgment of the
United States, recognised as an independent Power;
what degree of blame or astonishment can it excite
that she should have indignantly and vehemently re-
sented so intolerable an intervention with her rights
and her dignity as the cool and impudent pretension
of another Government to dispose, by an act of /its
own Legislature, and to itself, of an enormous
portion of the Mexican dominions ? It is, indeed,
" to add insult to injury"—on the part of the United
States' executive—to talk of the question of annexa-
tion of the territory of an independent and friendly
Power, "as pending before their Congress and people,"
in the teeth of that Power's decisive and urgent pro-
testations against such a proceeding. Mr. TYLER,
who seems to be about as bad a jurist as he is an un-
principled politician and moralist, affects to put the
defence of this enormous violation of National Inde-
pendence, on the plea that Mexico had avowed her
determination to recommence that horrible mode of
making war, against which our readers will remember
we have so often, in the name of humanity, indignantly
appealed to the execration of all civilised na-
tions. " The war," writes Mr. TYLER, in that peculiar
style and language the nationality of which it is al-
ways so difficult to determine, " the war thus threat-
ened to be renewed was promulgated by edicts and
decrees, which ordered on the part of the Mexican
military, the desolation of whole tracts of country,
, and the destruction, without discrimination, of all
ages, sexes, and condition of existence.' " Horrible
decrees, indeed, neither to be excused on the ground
of the Mexican irritation, nor of the defensive re-
action they might in execution effect on the secret
intrigues of the American " annexers," diplomatic
and other, with Mexican subjects; nor yet to be jus-
tified by the example of those previous unatoned
excesses of wanton and wholesale extermi-
nation in which the " United States' military"
had indulged in their wars upon the red men
of their western and north-western frontiers.
But the wolf was a sorry casuist with the lamb, from
all time ; and President TYLER talks more angrily
than logically of Senor REJON. The plea about the
Mexican cruelty would have been all very well, if it
had been entered in time ; if it could have been shown
that the annexation project was the consequences of
these " edicts and decrees,"—that it was post hoc;
ergo, propter hoc. The President has admitted in a
former part of his Message that, previously " Texas,"
(i. e. the annexation party in it) " had entered into
the treaty of annexation, upon the invitation of the
American Executive," and " was, for that act,
threatened (by Mexico) with this renewal of the war,"
&c. The plea of Mexican cruelty operating on the
sympathising tenderness of American humanity is,
thererefore, as worthless—and as out of date—as a
Pennsylvanian bond.
Coupling this flimsy complaint of this " Special
Message" with the strange article in the New York
Herald, we can detect something like, we think, a
" foregone conclusion." Is it meant, in the event of
the good sense and sound principle of the calmer
sections of the American public rejecting a proposi-
tion founded on such a palpable reliance on mere
physical strength to accomplish the ends of a faction's
ambition, to alarm their good sense out of its pro-
priety by raising this phantom of European interven-
tion ? We feel more confidence in the good sense of
our American brethren,—we have less doubt of their
inherent sagacity—than to feel much alarm about the
accomplishment of Mr. President TYLER'S annexation
policy, or the success of his _Message mystifications !

Some well-meaning people and Puseyites, in the
disguise of Protestants, look upon the " EXETER agi-
tation" as settled. The Primate has directed Dr. ?HILL-
Pons to retrace his steps ; the Bishop has apparently
yielded obedience, and all again is in the right train.
The real friends of the Reformed Religion, however,
are not to be deceived by. such shallow pretences, nor
to be stopped in their right course, by vague, un-