nd politicians only as honest, in their
management of the internal or external national concerns, as they are in
private life. The irreproachable private character of the President, and
of all the members of his administration, is known and respected. There
is not one of them who would not spurn with indignation the most remote
hint that, on similar pretences to those alleged for dismembering
Mexico, he might be capable of an attempt to appropriate to himself his
neighbor's farm.

In the total absence of any argument that can justify the war in which
we are now involved, resort has been had to a most extraordinary
assertion. It is said, that the people of the United States have an
hereditary, superiority of race over the Mexicans, which gives them the
right to subjugate and keep in bondage the inferior nation. This, it is
also alleged, will be the means of enlightening the degraded Mexicans,
of improving their social state, and of ultimately increasing the
happiness of the masses.

Is it compatible with the principle of Democracy, which rejects every
hereditary claim of individuals, to admit an hereditary superiority of
races? You very properly deny, that the son can, independent of his own
merit, derive any right or privilege whatever, from the merit or any
other social superiority of his father. Can you for a moment suppose,
that a very doubtful descent from men, who lived one thousand years ago,
has transmitted to you a superiority over your fellow-men? But the
Anglo-Saxons were inferior to the Goths, from whom the Spaniards claim
to be descended; and they were in no respect superior to the Franks and
to the Burgundians. It is not to their Anglo-Saxon descent, but to a
variety of causes, among which the subsequent mixture of Frenchified
Normans, Angevins and Gascons must not be forgotten, that the English
are indebted for their superior institutions. In the progressive
improvement of mankind, much more has been due to religious and
political institutions, than to races. Whenever the European nations,
which, from their language, are presumed to belong to the Latin or the
Sclavonian race, shall have conquered institutions similar to those of
England, there will be no trace left of the pretended superiority of one
of those races above the other. At this time, the claim is but a pretext
for covering and justifying unjust usurpation and unbounded ambition.

But admitting, with respect to Mexico, the superiority of race,