from realizing in its own good
time. Napoleon will not succeed in his Mexican policy, and Mexico will
add some fifteen or twenty new States to the American Union as soon as
it is clearly for the interests of all parties that it should be done,
and it can be done by mutual consent, without war or violence. The
Union will fight to maintain the integrity of her domain and the
supremacy of her laws within it, but she can never, consistently with
her principles or her interests, enter upon a career of war and
conquest. Her system is violated, endangered, not extended, by
subjugating her neighbors, for subjugation and liberty go not together.
Annexation, when it takes place, must be on terms of perfect equality
and by the free act of the state annexed. The Union can admit of no
inequality of rights and franchises between the States of which it is
composed. The Canadian Provinces and the Mexican and Central American
States, when annexed, must be as free as the original States of the
Union, sharing alike in the power and the protection of the
Republic--alike in its authority, its freedom, its grandeur, and its
glory, as one free, independent, self-governing people. They may gain
much, but must lose nothing by annexation.

The Emperor Napoleon and his very respectable protege, Maximilian, an
able man and a liberal-minded prince, can change nothing in the destiny
of the United States, or of Mexico herself; no imperial government can
be permanent beside the American Republic, no longer liable, since the
abolition of slavery, to be distracted by sectional dissensions. The
States that seceded will soon, in some way, be restored to their rights
and franchises in the Union, forming not the least patriotic portion of
the American people; the negro question will be settled, or settle
itself, as is most likely, by the melting away of the negro population
before the influx of white laborers; all traces of the late contest in
a very few years will be wiped out, the national debt paid, or greatly
reduced, and the prosperity and strength of the Republic be greater
than ever. Its moral force will sweep away every imperial throne on
the continent, without any effort or action on the part of the
government. There can be no stable government in Mexico till every
trace of the ecclesiastical policy established by the Council of the
Indies is obliterated, and the church placed there on the same footing
as in the United States; and that can