could be no quiet but through the end of
slavery, so in Mexico there could be no prosperity until the crushing
tyranny of intolerance should cease. The party of slavery in the
United States sent their emissaries to Europe to solicit aid; and so
did the party of the Church in Mexico, as organized by the old Spanish
council of the Indies, but with a different result. Just as the
Republican party had made an end of the rebellion, and was
establishing the best government ever known in that region, and giving
promise to the nation of order, peace, and prosperity, word was
brought us, in the moment of our deepest affliction, that the French
Emperor, moved by a desire to erect in North America a buttress for
imperialism, would transform the republic of Mexico into a
secundo-geniture for the House of Hapsburg. America might complain;
she could not then interpose, and delay seemed justifiable. It was
seen that Mexico could not, with all its wealth of land, compete in
cereal products with our northwest, nor in tropical products with
Cuba, nor could it, under a disputed dynasty, attract capital, or
create public works, or develop mines, or borrow money; so that the
imperial system of Mexico, which was forced at once to recognize the
wisdom of the policy of the republic by adopting it, could prove only
an unremunerating drain on the French treasury for the support of an
Austrian adventurer.

Meantime a new series of momentous questions grows up, and forces
itself on the consideration of the thoughtful. Republicanism has
learned how to introduce into its constitution every element of order,
as well as every element of freedom; but thus far the continuity of
its government has seemed to depend on the continuity of elections. It
is now to be considered how perpetuity is to be secured against
foreign occupation. The successor of Charles the First of England
dated his reign from the death of his father; the Bourbons, coming
back after a long series of revolutions, claimed that the Louis who
became king was the eighteenth of that name. The present Emperor of
the French, disdaining a title from election alone, calls himself
Napoleon the Third. Shall a republic have less power of continuance
when invading armies prevent a peaceful resort to the ballot-box? What
force shall it attach to intervening legislation? What validity to
debts contracted for its overthrow? These momentous questions are, by
the invasion of Mexico, thrown up for solu