ence of all other cabinets will now
become more manifest.

If an abstract love of liberty is, indeed, the true cause why England
seeks to abolish slavery throughout the world and has set the example of
emancipation in her West India colonies, she may really deserve the high
commendation of philanthropists. But it cannot be denied that whilst she
diffuses a spirit of individual freedom, she does not regret to behold
national dependence on herself established by interest and necessity. We
find among the documents transmitted to congress by President Tyler, a
number of private letters, in which it is alleged that the primary
object of Great Britain's interference was to prevent absolute
annexation to the United States. Indeed, Lord Aberdeen, in May, 1844,
declared to Mr. Everett that he "shared with Lord Brougham the hope and
belief that the treaty for annexation would not be ratified by our
senate."[48]

If the independence of Texas could be secured on the only probable
ground upon which Mexico would acknowledge it,--a pledge that she would
not subsequently join the United States;--and if so desirable a
result,--which appealed directly to the ambition and vanity of the
leading men of Texas, could be effected by the secret negotiations of
her ministers, England foresaw that she would obtain a decided advantage
over us in future negotiations, without a positive treaty stipulation to
that effect. Texas, with every element of prosperity in her people and
territory, was war-worn, and suffering from pecuniary embarrassments in
which her revolution plunged her. For an agricultural and commercial
people, peace and stability, under almost any liberal government, are
all that is requisite to insure progress. England, a free, maritime and
manufacturing country, deeply interested in Mexico as a purchaser, and
in the United States as a rival, was precisely the nation to secure
these advantages for Texas, especially as that republic offered a _point
d'appui_ which she could not find elsewhere on this continent.

The "free trade" policy of Great Britain was consequently addressed to
the cupidity of Texas as a bewitching allurement; and this was, perhaps,
secretly coupled with pecuniary offers which would enable her to
struggle against adverse fortune during the first years of independence.

This liberal system, while it attracted to England the cotton of Texas
in British vessels, would necessarily raise the national duties of the
re