The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1854-05-21

she United States Thirty years ago, however,
there was similar offer from San Salvador,
enc Of the Central American States; but at
that day of slow coaches and sailing vessels,
he thing was considered too Quixotic for .
moments serious consideration.
A new epoch has succeeded. Steam, cleo
trio teleerapks, practical annexation, Texas
ard California, have hurried us into the full
career of progress and manifest destiny .
The proposition from Honduras, which would
have been secuted as preposterous monstros-
ity twenty or thirty years ago, assumes now
the practical shape Of an ordinary business
Transaction. There is nothing alarming in it,
nothing novel, nothing Quixotic? The thing is
in perfect keeping with the spirit of the age.
We might have had the whole of Mexico
in 1s4s; but Nicholas p. Trist declined to
take it. His mind was incapable, per-
hops, of erasping SO much or peradventure he
sLrank from the prize as too large for our
capacities of digestion. We are over that
squeamishness now. The public mind in ad-
varce of cur politicians and diplomats, is fully
prepared for any amount of annexation North
and South. What objection can there be to
Honduras? If the South are satisfied, what
valid remonstrance can come from the North ?
Honduras is a rich country-richer, perhaps,
even than Cuba itself, in its natural products
and fertility. Under our hands it would soon
become great commercial country. More
over, it is free State, and will come in as q
free State and, in this view, it ought to be-
come an especial object among Northern men
20 accomplish the work Of annexation as an
,frset to Cuba. The South will doubtless be
satisfied to take Cuba as an equivalent What
system of labor Honduras, in the Union, may
ultimately adopt in the Development Of her
tropical products, it is not necessary now to
inquire She is free State, and as such will
propose to be admitted; and thus there can be
no free soil objection to her admission, in the
all-absorbing test of the negro question.
The only national obstacle, we apprehend,
to the annexation of Honduras, will be found
in the administration. 1t has hardly the capa-
city to seize the comprehensive advantages
which would be gained by such a measure
hardly the moral courage, independence or de-
cision of character to risk it. But there may
yet he men in Congress, and in the country,
with something of the political foresight and
experience of Clay, Webster and Calhoun-men
capable of looking not only half a century
behind them, but half century ahead, and
upon them will devolve the dnty of enforcing
a deliberate consideration of the overtures of
annexation, when they shall be presented from
Honduras.
Let Gen. Barrundia lay these overtures before
the President, and as he will probably submit
them to Congress without unnecessary delay,
together with oil the responsibility on the sub
ject, it is quite possible that Honduras may
make sensation in the world before the end
of the present session. If we can afford to pay
ten millions Of dollars for margin Of the de-
serts of Mexico, surely we con afford to accept,
as free gift, the rich and productive State of
Honduras. ~