ary and proper measures be adopted for the
development of the wealth and resources of New Mexico and California and
regular Territorial governments be established over them, such will
probably be the rapid enlargement of our commerce and navigation and
such the addition to the national wealth that the present generation may
live to witness the controlling commercial and monetary power of the
world transferred from London and other European emporiums to the city
of New York.

The apprehensions which were entertained by some of our statesmen in the
earlier periods of the Government that our system was incapable of
operating with sufficient energy and success over largely extended
territorial limits, and that if this were attempted it would fall to
pieces by its own weakness, have been dissipated by our experience. By
the division of power between the States and Federal Government the
latter is found to operate with as much energy in the extremes as in the
center. It is as efficient in the remotest of the thirty States which
now compose the Union as it was in the thirteen States which formed our
Constitution. Indeed, it may well be doubted whether if our present
population had been confined within the limits of the original thirteen
States the tendencies to centralization and consolidation would not have
been such as to have encroached upon the essential reserved rights of
the States, and thus to have made the Federal Government a widely
different one, practically, from what it is in theory and was intended
to be by its framers. So far from entertaining apprehensions of the
safety of our system by the extension of our territory, the belief is
confidently entertained that each new State gives strength and an
additional guaranty for the preservation of the Union itself.

In pursuance of the provisions of the thirteenth article of the treaty
of peace, friendship, limits, and settlement with the Republic of
Mexico, and of the act of July 29, 1848, claims of our citizens, which
had been "already liquidated and decided, against the Mexican Republic"
amounting, with the interest thereon, to $2,023,832.51 have been
liquidated and paid. There remain to be paid of these claims $74,192.26.

Congress at its last session having made no provision for executing the
fifteenth article of the treaty, by which the United States assume to
make satisfaction for the "unliquidated claims" of our citizens against
Mexico to "an amount not exceed