ises in showers of blood, that
serpent's eye that charms to destroy,--he plunged into it, and was swept
on and on till, disappointed in his calculation of the ease with which
Mexico might be subdued, he now finds himself he knows not where. How like
the half insane mumbling of a fever dream is the whole war part of his
late message! At one time telling us that Mexico has nothing whatever that
we can get--but territory; at another showing us how we can support the
war by levying contributions on Mexico. At one time urging the national
honor, the security of the future, the prevention of foreign interference,
and even the good of Mexico herself as among the objects of the war; at
another telling us that "to reject indemnity, by refusing to accept a
cession of territory, would be to abandon all our just demands, and to
wage the war, bearing all its expenses, without a purpose or definite
object." So then this national honor, security of the future, and
everything but territorial indemnity may be considered the no-purposes and
indefinite objects of the war! But, having it now settled that territorial
indemnity is the only object, we are urged to seize, by legislation here,
all that he was content to take a few months ago, and the whole province
of Lower California to boot, and to still carry on the war to take all
we are fighting for, and still fight on. Again, the President is resolved
under all circumstances to have full territorial indemnity for the
expenses of the war; but he forgets to tell us how we are to get the
excess after those expenses shall have surpassed the value of the whole
of the Mexican territory. So again, he insists that the separate national
existence of Mexico shall be maintained; but he does not tell us how
this can be done, after we shall have taken all her territory. Lest the
questions I have suggested be considered speculative merely, let me be
indulged a moment in trying to show they are not. The war has gone on some
twenty months; for the expenses of which, together with an inconsiderable
old score, the President now claims about one half of the Mexican
territory, and that by far the better half, so far as concerns our ability
to make anything out of it. It is comparatively uninhabited; so that we
could establish land-offices in it, and raise some money in that way. But
the other half is already inhabited, as I understand it, tolerably
densely for the nature of the country, and all its lands, or al