down into a half-despairing tone,
and tells us that "with a people distracted and divided by contending
factions, and a government subject to constant changes by successive
revolutions, the continued success of our arms may fail to secure a
satisfactory peace." Then he suggests the propriety of wheedling the
Mexican people to desert the counsels of their own leaders, and, trusting
in our protestations, to set up a government from which we can secure
a satisfactory peace; telling us that "this may become the only mode of
obtaining such a peace." But soon he falls into doubt of this too; and
then drops back on to the already half-abandoned ground of "more vigorous
prosecution." All this shows that the President is in nowise satisfied
with his own positions. First he takes up one, and in attempting to argue
us into it he argues himself out of it, then seizes another and goes
through the same process, and then, confused at being able to think of
nothing new, he snatches up the old one again, which he has some time
before cast off. His mind, taxed beyond its power, is running hither and
thither, like some tortured creature on a burning surface, finding no
position on which it can settle down and be at ease.

Again, it is a singular omission in this message that it nowhere intimates
when the President expects the war to terminate. At its beginning, General
Scott was by this same President driven into disfavor if not disgrace, for
intimating that peace could not be conquered in less than three or four
months. But now, at the end of about twenty months, during which time our
arms have given us the most splendid successes, every department and every
part, land and water, officers and privates, regulars and volunteers,
doing all that men could do, and hundreds of things which it had ever
before been thought men could not do--after all this, this same President
gives a long message, without showing us that as to the end he himself has
even an imaginary conception. As I have before said, he knows not where he
is. He is a bewildered, confounded, and miserably perplexed man. God grant
he may be able to show there is not something about his conscience more
painful than his mental perplexity.

The following is a copy of the so-called "treaty" referred to in the
speech:

"Articles of Agreement entered into between his Excellency
David G. Burnet, President of the Republic of Texas, of the one part,
and his Excellency General Sant