the age has put forth,-on the publication of our next number. We wish to do so for the additional reason, that we have very partially stated our own views on this great subject, and because we are anxious to treat it both more in detail and more at large. In the meantime, we cannot more appropriately conclude this review, than in the words of the following forcible and eloquent extract, from the Report of Mr. Sawyer, on the proper office of education: "Its true office is to discipline the mind,-to call into active and unremitted exercise the affections of the heart,-and to develope and invigorate the physical powers. Of what use is the most gifted intellect, if the heart, which gives it direction, be wrong? How much good would that intellect confer upon mankind, if its bodily frame-work were inadequate to sustain the tremendous pressure from within? Education, like nature, has a taste for the beautiful, and consults proportion and harmony in all its operations. Its first great principle then, is, so to proportion and harmonize the intellectual, physical and moral powers, as to make them co-operate equally towards the designed end. If you educate the mind and body, but neglect the heart, you may raise up a giant frame and a giant intellect, but you do it at the peril of all that is most holy and attractive in spiritualized human nature, and run the risk of elevating to a most dangerous position, some moral monster, whose sphere of mischief shall only be limited by his aptitude for it. Then, again, if you educate only the mind and heart, you do the grossest injustice both to man and his Creator; because, by such an act, you virtually question the necessity of physical organization. From the moment you cease to regard the material covering of the soul as an object of your most delicate and unremitting care, you cease to cultivate, for any practical purposes, the intellectual and moral faculties. So, if you educate the heart and body, but leave the mind to grope its way unaided through the darkness of night, you strike from the human system the very source of man's greatness;-you do all in your power to annihilate that sublime attribute of humanity which assimilates him to his Creator, and makes him master of a power that eternity alone can fully develope. No system of popular education, which is not thus impartial in its bestowments, can meet the wants of the present age."

ART. IX.-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS.

1. The Message of the President of the United States to the Senate, with

2. The accompanying documents relative to the Treaty for the Annexation of Texas to the United States.

3. The Speeches of Messrs. Woodbury and Walker, in the Senate of the United States, on the Ratification of the Treaty for the Annexation of Texas. 1844.

IN 1673, a recollét monk named Marquette, and an Indian trader named Joliet, both of whom had had considerable intercourse with the tribes of Indians who occupied the borders of the Canadian lakes, were induced to undertake the discovery of the course and termination of a great river, which they were informed flowed in a southerly direction through vast forests, and which it was supposed might furnish a passage either to China or the Gulf of Mexico. Their painful and perilous journey was successfully prosecuted from the Bay of Michigan to the mouth of the Arkansas river. They were fully confirmed in the intelligence that the river lost itself in the Gulf of Mexico, and consequently returned to Quebec to make their report to the Governor of the French province.

Great joy was expressed upon the report of these adventurers. A solemn te deum was sung by the bishop and clergy in the presence of the Governor, the constituted authorities and principal inhabitants of the province. A few years afterwards, the enterprize of finding the termination of the Mississippi was pursued by La Salle, who succeeded in reaching the Gulf through that River. In the course of his expedition, he explored much of the country of Wisconsin, Illinois and Arkansas. Several years after the successful result of his first enterprize, La Salle undertook to plant a colony on the banks of the stream where he had displayed so much energy and perseverance, and was clothed with powers from the French monarch adequate to the fulfilment of the task. He fitted out an expedition provided with the necessaries for a colony in 1684.

This expedition, by mistake, passed the mouths of the Mississippi, and was finally landed on the Bay of St. Bernard in Texas. Here La Salle built a fort, hoisted the flag of his

country, and took formal possession in the name of the French monarch. Some time after this he removed his men into the interior, erected another fort, and prepared for a permanent settlement on the Colorado. After remaining some time, he undertook to reach the Mississippi river from the point where he had made his settlement, but before his arrival on the Western branch of the Trinity river, he was murdered by one of his companions. His body was left. on the soil of Texas.

These acts constitute the foundation of the claim that the king of France made to the present Republic of Texas, as forming a portion of the province of Louisiana. Some years after the death of La Salle, and during a war between France and Spain, the Governor of Coahuila, by the order of the Viceroy of Mexico, who acted in pursuance of standing instructions from Philip II. of Spain, was commanded to hunt out and exterminate all foreigners who should penetrate the Gulf of Mexico, and fitted out an expedition against the forts that had been erected by La Salle. In the course of the expedition he met with a tribe of Indians, who treated him with civility and kindness. These he called "Texas"—friends. The Governor ascertained that the members of La Salle's colony had either been destroyed, or had left the country, and he returned home.

This was the first movement of the crown of Spain towards the occupation of the country. These two enterprizes constituted the basis of the opposing pretensions of France, and of the United States, who derived title from France, on the one part, and of the crown of Spain on the other, to the ownership of that country.

Marbois, in his History of Louisiana, affords the following testimony upon the subject of the boundaries of the French province of Louisiana :

"La possession prise au nom de la France s' etendoit de l'embouchure de la Mobile qui traverse la Floride jusqu' a' la baie Saint Bernard. Elle fut à peine contestée par les Espagnols, et les rapports d'amitie et interets qui s' etablirent au commencement du dixhuitiéme siécle entre les deux royaumes firent cesser les réclamations de la cour de Madrid. Il n'y eut cependent aucun réglement de limites et il parait que d' un coté les Espagnols craignaient si elles etaient exactement décrites d' avoir à consenter à des concessions et que l'autre coté les Francois desiraient ne point borner pour des termes précis des aggrandissements possibles."

In 1762, France ceded the province of Louisiana, lying west of the Mississippi and of the British province of West Florida, to Spain. In 1800, Spain retroceded the same province to the French republic; and, in April, 1803, the French republic transferred it to the United States. Napoleon, the commissioner employed by him to negotiate the treaty with the United States, and the commissioner who afterwards, by authority of the French government, surrendered the possession of the territory, severally informed the United States that the boundary of Louisiana, on the west, was the Rio Bravo del Norte. The Spanish authorities had established a fort at Nacogdoches, and one or two other posts in the province, after the cession by Spain, and before the delivery of the province to France, and Spain, in consequence, claimed to have possession of Texas, and protested against the occupation of any portion to the west of the Sabine by the United States. We have a letter before us, written by Mr. Jefferson in 1825, in which he states, that these military posts were collusively established between the French and Spanish officers for the purposes of contraband commerce, and that the United States had the journal of one of the principal officers of the province which demonstrated the fraud. The government, however, did not occupy the territory to the west of the Sabine, but commenced negotiations for the Floridas. These negotiations were interrupted for a time, and were not brought to a close till 1819, when the Sabine was established as the western boundary of the United States. Prior to this date, the American authorities had expressed the firmest convictions of the strength of the American title. We are convinced that Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison were thoroughly impressed with the notion that the claim of Spain was entirely without foundation; and, indeed, no man can read the despatch of Mr. Adams, setting forth the American claim, in reply to those of the Spanish minister, without yielding his assent to its cogency and justice. We are not prepared to admit Mr. Adams' later opinion, that the claim was "flimsy." We have not been able to find the evidence on which he founds this declaration. Since the negotiation of the treaty of 1819, imputations have been repeatedly thrown upon the skill and conduct of the American negotiator. A collation of the evidence seems very clearly to establish, that Spain would have been satisfied with a boundary considerably VOL, VI.-No. 12.

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to the west of the Sabine, and the suspicion is certainly raised by the papers appertaining to the negotiation, that the Secretary of State was informed of that fact. Hence it is, that in the proposition to unite Texas to the Union, the question assumes the shape in which it appears to the public mind. It is the re-annexation of a portion of our national domain. It is not the acquisition of territory, to which we have never had a claim, but the recovery of what was once ours, and was lost, unwisely and improvidently lost, that is desired by those who advocate the measure.

The five years following this treaty, was to Texas a period of disorder, anarchy and confusion. The contemporary journals of the time contain a declaration of its independence, from which we take the following extracts:

"The citizens of Texas have long indulged the hope that, in the adjustment of the boundaries of the Spanish possessions in America, and of the territories of the United States, they should be included within the limits of the latter. The claims of the United States, long and strenuously urged, encouraged this hope. An expectation so flattering prevented any effectual effort to throw off the yoke of Spanish authority, though it could not restrain some unavailing rebellions against an odious tyranny. The recent treaty between Spain and the United States of America has dissipated an illusion too long fondly cherished, and has roused the citizens of Texas from the torpor into which a fancied security had lulled them. They have seen themselves, by a convention to which they were no party, abandoned to the dominion of the crown of Spain, and left a prey not only to impositions already intolerable, but to all those exactions which Spanish rapacity is capable of devising. The citizens of Texas would have proved themselves unworthy of the age in which they live-unworthy of their ancestry of the kindred republics of the American continent-could they have hesitated in this emergency as to what course to pursue. Spurning the fetters of colonial vassalage, disdaining to submit to the most atrocious despotism that ever disgraced the annals of Europe,-they have resolved, under the blessing of God, to be FREE."

This declaration bears date in 1819. We find, in the contemporary history, notices of the unsettled and disturbed state of the province from that time till 1824. In 1824, Texas, with Coahuila, joined the Mexican confederation, and established a constitution for the control of their internal government. The constituent Congress of Coahuila and Texas, in August, 1824, decreed that "the State of Coahuila and Texas is an integral part of the federation, equal to the other States of which the same is composed, and is free, so