agricultural purposes, in fifty years. They could not live there.
Suppose they were to cultivate the lands; they could only make them
productive in a slight degree by irrigation or artificial watering. The
people there produce little, and live on little. That is not the
characteristic, I take it, of the people of the Eastern or of the Middle
States, or of the Valley of the Mississippi. They produce a good deal,
and they consume a good deal.

Again, Sir, New Mexico is not like Texas. I have hoped, and I still
hope, that Texas will be filled up from among ourselves, not with
Spaniards, not with _peons_; that its inhabitants will not be Mexican
landlords, with troops of slaves, predial or otherwise.

Mr. Rusk here rose, and said that he disliked to interrupt the
Senator, and therefore he had said nothing while he was describing
the country between the Nueces and the Rio Grande; but he wished
now to say, that, when that country comes to be known, it will be
found to be as valuable as any part of Texas. The valley of the Rio
Grande is valuable from its source to its mouth. But he did not
look upon _that_ as indemnity; he claimed that as the _right_ of
Texas. So far as the Mexican population is concerned, there is a
good deal of it in Texas; and it comprises many respectable
persons, wealthy, intelligent, and distinguished. A good many are
now moving in from New Mexico, and settling in Texas.

I take what I say from Major Gaines. But I am glad to hear that any part
of New Mexico is fit for the foot of civilized man. And I am glad,
moreover, that there are some persons in New Mexico who are not so
blindly attached to their miserable condition as not to make an effort
to come out of their country, and get into a better.

Sir, I would, if I had time, call the attention of the Senate to an
instructive speech made in the other house by Mr. Smith of Connecticut.
He seems to have examined all the authorities, to have conversed with
all the travellers, to have corresponded with all our agents. His speech
contains communications from all of them; and I commend it to every man
in the United States who wishes to know what we are about to acquire by
the annexation of New Mexico.

New Mexico is secluded, isolated, a place by itself, in the midst and at
the foot of vast mountains, five hundred miles from the settled part of
Texas, and as far from anywhere else! It does not belong a