s
which prudent men can not be expected to incur. Important contracts,
involving large expenditures, entered into by the central Government,
have been set at defiance by the local governments. Peaceful American
residents, occupying their rightful possessions, have been suddenly
expelled the country, in defiance of treaties and by the mere force of
arbitrary power. Even the course of justice has not been safe from
control, and a recent decree of Miramon permits the intervention of
Government in all suits where either party is a foreigner. Vessels of
the United States have been seized without law, and a consular officer
who protested against such seizure has been fined and imprisoned for
disrespect to the authorities. Military contributions have been levied
in violation of every principle of right, and the American who resisted
the lawless demand has had his property forcibly taken away and has been
himself banished. From a conflict of authority in different parts of
the country tariff duties which have been paid in one place have been
exacted over again in another place. Large numbers of our citizens have
been arrested and imprisoned without any form of examination or any
opportunity for a hearing, and even when released have only obtained
their liberty after much suffering and injury, and without any hope of
redress. The wholesale massacre of Crabbe and his associates without
trial in Sonora, as well as the seizure and murder of four sick
Americans who had taken shelter in the house of an American upon the
soil of the United States, was communicated to Congress at its last
session. Murders of a still more atrocious character have been
committed in the very heart of Mexico, under the authority of Miramon's
Government, during the present year. Some of these were only worthy
of a barbarous age, and if they had not been clearly proven would have
seemed impossible in a country which claims to be civilized. Of this
description was the brutal massacre in April last, by order of General
Marquez, of three American physicians who were seized in the hospital at
Tacubaya while attending upon the sick and the dying of both parties,
and without trial, as without crime, were hurried away to speedy
execution. Little less shocking was the recent fate of Ormond Chase,
who was shot in Tepic on the 7th of August by order of the same Mexican
general, not only without a trial, but without any conjecture by his
friends of the cause of his arre