Year: 1869




The old cry. Dispatches from Mexico OF a
very important character have been laid before
the Cabinet, supposed to relate to- negotiations
for the sale Of Sonora and Lower California.
We are tired of this eternal nibbling of Mexican
schemers and Wall street plotters at the
Treasury in Washington. No sooner does
set of rulers become effete in Mexico than
straightway we have negotiations for the sale
of slice Of territory. The Gadsden purchase
Kept Santa Anna alive for time. Comonfort
nibbled all the while he was in
power. Then Juarez came on THE
carpet with the Mclean treaties. After
these followed the Romero treaties, some
of which, like others, their predecessors.
were too disgusting to be submitted to the
Senate. Now comes another Juarez applica-
tion for little more money in exchange for
land. We have seen this thing ripening and
watched the silly subterfuges which have been
resorted to in Mexico to divert public atten-
ton from the facts. Every Mexican ruler is
willing to sell territory if he can only keep the
fact from the public till such time as he can
discount the drafts for the money. If he only
gets that he cares not fig for public abuse


1t is time that this petty and retail trading
for empire be stopped. Mexico is pursuing
the natural course of her orbit towards the
American Union rapidly enough now, and
there is no need of paying speculators either
Mexican or American, for chips when the
entire block is coming of its own accord.
From the day that our government will adopt
and announce the policy that it will pay no
more money for Mexican territory we shall see
new order of things springing up there.
Mexican government is worn out and mex
tricably involved in debt. Mexican trade is
shrinking continually, and presents to-day but
a mumifed resemblance to what it once was.
Mexican society is dissolving and being dis
placed by anarchy and bands of robbers. A
handful of kidnappers do not hesitate now to
60 into any town with less than ten thousand
inhabitants and notify the most wealthy per-
sons that they must pay down so many dol
lars or they will be taken to the country and
held for ransom or death. The very men who
to-day are offering to sell the national terri
tory do not dare to trust their persons one
league from the gates of the capital without
formidable escort. On all sides are revolu-
tions and rumors of revolutions, which are
kept down more by the poverty of the
government and the country having so little
to plunder than by any force that either can
exert.


The time is approaching when, as the next
and most interested neighbor of Mexico, we
must step in and administer government there
in the interests of civilization and humanity,
and the payment of money for portions of the
territory will only have the effect of delaying,
instead of fastening, the course Of nature.
What is needed now is the adoption of an in
variable policy by the government-that it
will pay for no more annexation. If any
neighboring territory becomes prey to thieves,
as in Mexico, or OFFICERS, as in Cuba, we may
step in in behalf of weaker society and ex-
! tend over it the blessings of an organized
government. If we do not do this some one
else must, and that we cannot consent to. If
the government of President Juarez desires to
have its hands strengthened and its power
restored to an efficient condition, let it make q
proper application for the extension of our
shield over it. We will then organize govern
ment with such powers that society shall be
respected, industry and trade revived, revenue
created, the domestic and foreign debt placed
in due course of liquidation, and prosperity
and happiness bloom throughout the land. But
we want no more petty treaties nor retail
trading in nationalities.