HITHERTO, since the sudden breaking out of this war, little has been said, in regard to it, in any quarter, but what has had relation to the paramount duty which the country owes to itself, in the new position in which it is placed as a belligerent power. On all sides, our people have been chiefly occupied, as hostile armies are on the approach to battle, in surveying the enemy, in contemplating his force and numbers, and all his means of annoyance and injury, and considering what must be done to insure their own success in the conflict of arms to which they are committed. This they have regarded as their first duty. Everywhere the sentiment of patriotism has prevailed. And never was this virtue appealed to, or responded to by any people, under more trying circumstances. To the better and more intelligent portion of our people, war is utterly revolting; and we believe the impression is all but universal among such, even in advance of all argument and all minute investigation, that we have been plunged into this war, by the blunders, or the crime, of those who administer the public affairs of our own country. Divided into parties-and accustomed, as those in the ranks of the Opposition are, to give free utterance to every feeling of contempt and scorn with which the conduct of the Administration habitually inspires them -it is a thing to be specially noted and commended, that no portion of our peo

ple, however deeply exasperated by this condition of things, have ever suffered themselves to forget, for a moment, the fidelity due to the country, in the face of the public enemy. The first care of all has been that the hands of the Government should be fully furnished with every means and weapon necessary to meet the advance of that enemy in the field. Under very peculiar circumstances, especially unfavorable to calm deliberation, or rather as if forbidden to deliberate, Congress was appealed to by the President, and the response was promptly sent back to him, like an echo. Nothing was demanded in vain-though more was demanded than necessity required, or truth or the Constitution could sanction. And the whole country, with a singular unanimity, has virtually given its assent and countenance to the war, and has cheered on the Government to the employment of every necessary means for securing the defence and maintaining the honor of the land. And all this has been done,with a conscious feeling, we are persuaded, pervading all intelligent classes of the community, in all quarters of the country, that in its inception, this is purely an Executive war-a war of the President's own seeking, or if not specially sought by him, a war into which he was precipitated by acts of his own, of the most unjustifiable and the most reprehensible character.

After what has already transpired since this war was commenced, after what has already been done to vindicate the patriotism of our people, and the glory of our arms, and after the severe chastisement which the enemy has already received, we think it high time now that the people should begin to consider seriously of a proper reckoning between themselves and the guilty authors of the war. If we should wait till the war may be ended, till those who have got us into it may see fit to get us out in their own way, we believe the day of reckoning would never come. Our silence would be construed into consent and entire acquiescence. We believe the time has already come, when peace should be made, or sought at least, with Mexico; and the very fact that no step whatever has been taken, or, so far as we know, contemplated, by the Administration, towards an offer or an effort to renew friendly relations with that Power, since the disasters which have befallen her arms on the Rio Grande, should be held as a new offence, only less reprehensible than that of bringing us originally into a needless war. The voice of the people must be heard on this matter. We do not hesitate to affirm, as our undoubting conviction, that Mexico is ready to treat with us to-day, if she were approached by us as a weak but proud nation should be, by one so much her superior in power. She should be treated delicately, in respect of her pride, and generously and humanely, in consideration of her depressed and distracted condition. To-day, Commissioners to offer her terms of peace might be approaching her capital; or, at any rate, in some mode, measures should have been taken for bringing before her Government, at the earliest period, declarations and proofs of our pacific and friendly disposition. But all this seems far enough from the purpose of the Administration. We hear of nothing from that quarter, but designs of prosecuting the war to the heart of Mexico. We hear of an army of invasion, thirty thousand strong, to be concentrated with all possible dispatch on the frontiers of that country, and to be precipitated, in three grand divisions, without delay, and with little or no regard to climate or season, on the capital of the Empire. There, and there only, in the enemy's country, and at his capital, Napoleon-like, we are to dictate the terms of peace! Great words, and grand ideas, these, for modest and peace-loving

republicans to employ. We are "to conquer a peace in Mexico"-that is the phrase; and to do this, we are to march an army of thirty thousand men, fivesixths of them militia, many hundreds of miles into the enemy's country-strictly an army of invasion, and of foreign conquest. Yes: we are to have an army of invasion and of foreign conquest, composed, five to one, of militia; and by what authority? Certainly not by the authority of the Constitution. No project or notion could be entertained more palpably in contempt of that instrument. In short, the plans for prosecuting this war are only equaled in atrocious usurpations of Executive power, by those which produced the war. It is time the people began to look after their own interest in this matter. Our own mind, at least, is made up. We will no longer refrain from uttering, before the country, the convictions which have been forced upon us, that the Administration, at Washington, is wholly responsible for this war; that though we may have had cause of war against Mexico, upon which we might have justified ourselves, according to the usage of nations in times past, yet this war was undertaken for no such cause; that in its inception it was in no way a war of defence, on our part, but of aggression; that it was induced and provoked by the Administration, at Washington, in assuming military occupation of a section of country to which the United States had no title, and which was till that moment in the actual and undisturbed possession of Mexico, as it always had been, since she had been a nation; a movement of the army of the United States into a foreign territory, by the sole authority of the President, and as little to be justified by any plea of necessity, arising from anything done, or threatened to be done, by Mexico, as by anything found in the Constitution of the country; and finally, that the plans for prosecuting the war, and, so far as we are permitted to understand them, the objects to be secured by it, if the Administration is to have its way, have as little in them, as the inception of the war itself, to commend them to the just sympathy or countenance of the American people. Such, we say, are our convictions, and we give them free utterance; but we propose, too, to offer to our readers some reasons for the opinions that we are so free to express.

The first thing we have to consider is,

that this war was begun with little real regard to those “ wrongs and injuries" committed by Mexico against citizens of the United States, which form the burthen of complaint against that Power both in the President's annual message to Congress, in December last, and in his war message, of the 11th of May. This is a point which ought to be well understood by the whole country; It may be a question which party began the warand this we shall consider hereafter-but however this may be, certain it is, it had little or nothing to do, in its origin, with any wrongs and injuries whatever committed by Mexico. If she began hostilities, of course it was for some cause, if for any cause at all, other than that of wrongs and injuries committed by herself. If hostile demonstrations were first made on our side, we repeat, that very little regard, except by way of pretence, was had to our unsettled claims on Mexico; they entered very little into the real considerations which led to these demonstrations. The President has taken care all the while to make these claims figure largely in his communications to Čongress, touching our difficulties with that Power; and we have not the least doubt that he has handled this juggle so adroitly as to make the impression, to a wide extent, on the minds of our people, that the real cause of this war is to be found, in a great measure at least, in these unsettled claims, and the necessity he was under of enforcing the adjustment of them without any further delay. Let us not allow ourselves to be deceived and imposed on in this way. If there had been no causes of difference between us and Mexico but this, and if the President had had no other object but this in view, there would have been no war, ner any approach to war. The President knows this well enough, and he has only sought to flourish the wrongs and injuries we have so long borne" in the face of our people, that he might prepare their hearts" for a war to be undertaken and prosecuted on other grounds, and for very different objects. We say again, let us not allow ourselves to be deceived and imposed on by the transparent pretences of the Administration at Washington. This war is to be referred mainly to one cause, and one cause only; it has been brought about in the determined pursuit of one principal object, and one only: that object was the acquisition of more territory. Not Texas only, or Texas proper-that was secured

already, without war, or, as things finally resulted, without any danger of war. But the President wanted more territory than was secured by the terms of annexation, or than was likely to be obtained merely by an amicable settlement of the question of boundary, except as negotiation should be preceded or accompanied by military demonstrations in and about the coveted country. We think it susceptible of the clearest moral demonstration, that this has been the one grand object of the President; and that it is to this one object, as the principal and main thing, and the measures resorted to to secure it, that the country is indebted for the existence of this war. We shall recur to this point before we conclude this paper, and dwell upon it more at length. At present we wish to speak a little further, and more particu larly, of our unsatisfied claims on Mexico, that we may understand for ourselves exactly what we have to complain of on this score, and what they have to do with the war, or the war with them.

Ever since the revolution which separated Mexico from Spain, in 1822, American citizens in Mexico, and the vessels of American citizens on the coasts of that country, have been subjected to occasional insults, oppressions, exactions and injuries. These things have arisen partly from the want of that just sense of the rights of persons and property, so well understood in our own country, and so little appreciated in Mexico, and partly as incident to the unsettled state of things there, and the fact that, if a republic at all, Mexico is a military republic, with the supreme power shifting almost as often as the seasons change from the hands of one military chief and despot to another. In such a country persons and property are necessarily very insecure; and it is not much to be wondered at, though not to be justified or tolerated, that strangersthe citizens of other countries-trying the hazards of trade or business there, should suffer in common with those who are native to the country. It happens not unfrequently in such cases, that such strangers become the special objects of the arbitrary authority and the rapacity of the Government. The same causes, too, which operated to produce the injuries to which our citizens were subject at the hands of Mexico from time to time, in a long series of years, have constantly stood in the way of obtaining that prompt and complete redress which was due to the respective instances of outrage or in

jury. There has, of course, often been the most provoking indisposition and delay to consider these cases, or to acknowledge the obligation to make satisfaction for them. The sense of justice has not at any time been very keen or active, and when this has been waked up, as has been done at times by some rather rough handling of the Mexican authorities, the necessities of that country, always urgent and pressing, have mightily interfered as the necessities of desperate debtors always do with the payment, and even the adjustment, of her proper obligations and dues.

In 1831, the American Government sought, as far as possible, to provide against the recurrence of these injuries on the part of Mexico, by defining with clearness and precision, in the Treaty of Amity and Commerce with that Power, of the 5th of April, the rights and duties of the respective parties towards each other. This may have checked, but, unhappily, it was not sufficient to prevent the commission of repeated acts of the Mexican authorities, especially of the subordinate authorities, injurious and oppressive to American citizens. A communication from the Secretary of State to Mr. Ellis, then our Chargé in Mexico, in July, 1836, enumerates some fourteen distinct cases of injury and outrage to American citizens and their property, occurring after the date of the Treaty, which the Minister was instructed to bring afresh to the notice of the Mexican Government.

It is worth while to remark, that it was this particular period of time-one of very special interest to Mexico-that was first selected by our Government for pressing, with uncommon zeal and urgency, the claims which our citizens had on the justice of that Power. These claims dated back, some of them, as far as 1815, and so on up to the revolution which terminated the Spanish rule in that country; and very many of them were older than the Treaty of 1831. Other claims had arisen, as we have seen, subsequent to that Treaty; yet from the period of General Jackson's accession to the Presidency, in 1829, up to the time when Mexico became involved in civil war with her revolted province of Texas, Mexico was treated with the utmost forbearance, in reference to these claims. In truth, they may be said to have been very little pressed, though not quite neglected. Through eight successive annual messages to

Congress from General Jackson, the subject of these claims is scarcely once, if at all, alluded to-except in the last. In the last of these, however, that of December, 1836, the subject is referred to in these general terms. Speaking of our relations with "all our neighbors on this continent," he says: "The just and longstanding claims of our citizens upon some of them are yet sources of dissatisfaction and complaint. No danger is apprehended, however, that they will not be peacefully, although tardily, acknowledged and paid by all, unless the irritating effect of her struggle with Texas should unfortu nately make our immediate neighbor, Mexico, an exception."

Beyond all doubt, the secret was here disclosed, which might well account not only for some of the more aggravated cases of outrage to the rights and property of American citizens, then recently perpetrated by subordinate Mexican authorities, and for a more than ordinary indisposition to heed our complaints, but also for the very particular importunity which just then characterized our demands for redress. Mexico had come to look upon the United States and our people with extreme distrust. She did not at all relish our sympathies towards the Texans in their struggle for emancipation. She took up a violent prejudice against us-of course a very injurious one-as if our desire to see Texas free was stronger than our friendship for her, or as if we entertained a secret wish and purpose, some day or another, to take that province to our own embrace! Texas declared her independence on the 2d day of March, 1836, and on the 21st of April the decisive battle of San Jacinto was fought. Mexico persisted in believing, and does, we think, to this day, that American citizens had something to do with that revolation, and that battle. Notwithstanding the decisive result of the affair of San Jacinto, including the capture of the President of Mexico, rumors were soon abroad in Texas of great preparations for another invasion from Mexico; and just about the time when, according to these rumors, the invading army should have been looked for in Texas, it was found that the American General, (Gaines,) at the head of a formidable body of troops, had deemed it necessary under instructions from Washington, in order to guard the frontier of the United States against Indians! to march fifty miles into the inte rior of Texas, and take up a position at