that Canada is hers. But then, she has dared to think about Texas, she has cast some very suspicious glances at Cuba, and there is great reason to apprehend that her heart is at this moment upon California! True, she has formally denied, to our own government, that she has any desire to see Texas other than an independent nation. True, she once conquered Cuba, and gave it back again to Spain by the treaty of 1763. True, she has given no outward and visible sign of any passionate yearning for the further dismemberment of Mexico. But who trusts to diplomatic assurances? Who confides in innocent appearances? Diplomatic assurances! Has not the chairman of our own Committee of Foreign Affairs warned us, that, "like the oaths which formerly accompanied treaties, they have been the cheap contrivances of premeditated hostile action?" Has he not warned us especially, against the diplomatic assurance of Great Britain in regard to Texas, as "the ordinary harbinger of whatever it most solemnly denies?"

Such a course of argument as this, Mr. Chairman, is certainly in one respect entirely conclusive. There is, obviously, no mode of replying to it. Once assume the position, that neither the words nor the deeds of Great Britain are to be taken in evidence of her designs, but that her assurances are all hollow, and her acts all hypocritical, and there is no measure of aggression and outrage which you may not justly apprehend from her. I do not believe, however, that any considerable part of this House, or of this country, will acquiesce in the propriety of proceeding upon premises which involve imputations so gross and so gratuitous. And once again I ask, where is the proof of these alarming and aggressive purposes of Great Britain, so far as our own continent is concerned? Where is the evidence that she is inclosing us in a fatal network, and hemming us in on every side? Nay, sir, I boldly put the question to the consciences of all who hear me of which of the two countries, Great Britain or the United States, will impartial history record, that it mani fested a spirit of impatient and insatiate self-aggrandizement on this North American continent? How does the record stand, as already made up? If Great Britain has been thinking of Texas, we have acquired Louisiana; if Great Britain has been

looking after Cuba, we have established ourselves in Florida; if Great Britain has set her heart on California, we have put our hand upon Texas. Reproach Great Britain, if you please, with the policy she has pursued in extending her dominions else where. Reprobate, if you please, her course of aggression upon the East Indian tribes; and do not forget to include your own Indian policy in the same commination. But let us hear no of her encroaching spirit in this quarter. It is upon our selves, and not upon her, that such a spirit may be fairly charged. I say to the gentleman from Illinois, as one of the peculiar. friends of reannexing Texas, and reoccupying the whole of Oregon, mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur.

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Indeed, Mr. Chairman, the story has been told of us already. We have been anticipated in all these imputations of an unscrupulous spirit of aggrandizement. I have here a speech by Mr. Huskisson-a name held in peculiar reverence by the friends of free trade in this House, and entitled to the respectful regard of us all, both for the intellectual ability and the moral excellence with which it was long associated delivered in the British House of Commons in 1830, on the political and commercial relations of Great Britain and Mexico. The speech is full of interesting and curious matter, and I doubt not that I shall be indulged in reading some passages from it to the House.

"But, Sir, if there are great political interests which should induce us to endeavor to maintain to Spain her present sovereignty and possession of Cuba and Porto Rico, there are other political considerations which make it not less important—if possible, still more important—that Mexico should settle into a state of internal peace and tranquillity, and of entire and secure independence. If the United States have declared that they cannot allow the island of Cuba to belong to any maritime power in Europe, Spain excepted, neither can England, as the first of those maritime powers- I say it fearlessly, because I feel it strongly-suffer the United States to bring under their dominion a greater portion of the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, than that which they now possess."

This, Mr. Chairman, be it remembered, was a public declaration on the floor of the House of Commons, in the year 1830, by one of the most leading and influential British statesmen of that day. And I cannot help remarking, before I read on, that it appears to have produced not the slightest sensation on this side of the water. General Jackson was then President of the

United States. Mr. Van Buren was then Secretary of State, and was drafting, in that capacity, those memorable instructions which afterwards cost him his recall from London; instructions, by which the attention of the British Government was invited to the peculiar relations of amity existing, not between Great Britain and the United States, but between Great Britain and the Democratic Administration which had just succeeded to power. This peculiar friendship of General Jackson and his friends towards Great Britain, was in no degree disturbed, it seems, by the distinct declaration that we should not be suffered to annex Texas. There was no outcry against British interference or British aggression. There was no clamor about her designs to effect the abolition of Southern slavery. No, Sir, the abolition movements of Great Britain had not then been commenced in her own colonies. And a most notable circumstance it is, that the disposition of Great Britain to prevent the annex. ation of Texas to this country, should have been so clearly mani fested, before she had made the slightest demonstration of an anti-slavery spirit. It puts an utterly extinguishing negative upon the charge, that her opposition is the mere result of her designs upon American slavery. But let me proceed with the speech of Mr. Huskisson."

"Within the last twenty-seven years they have become masters of all the shores of that Gulf, from the point of Florida to the river Sabine, including the mouths of the Mississippi, and of other great rivers, the port of New Orleans, and the valuable and secure harbors of Florida; and, within these few days, we hear of their intention of forming a naval station and arsenal at the islands of the Dry Tortugas, a commanding position in the Gulf stream between Florida and Cuba. With all this extent of coast and islands, we know, further, that designs are entertained, and daily acted upon —I will not say by the present Government of the United States, but, notoriously, by the people—to get possession of the fertile and extensive Mexican province of Texas. To borrow an expression of a deceased statesman of that country, 'the whole people of America have their eye' upon that province. They look to all the country between the river Sabine and the river Bravo del Norte, as a territory that must, ere long, belong to their Union. They have, also, I believe, that same eye upon some of the western coast of Mexico, possessing valuable ports in the Gulf of California. Should they obtain these districts, the independence of Mexico, I will venture to say, will be no better, or more secure, than that of the Creck Indians, or any other Indian tribe now living within the circle of the present recognized limits of the United States; and the Gulf of Mexico will become as much a part of their waters as the Black Sea was once of the waters of Turkey, or as the channel which separates England from Ireland may be considered as part of the waters of the United Kingdom.

"I may be told, Sir, that these are visionary alarms, contemplating schemes of aggrandizement and ambition which never have been, and probably never will be, entertained in any quarter At this moment, I willingly admit that there exists a friendly disposition in the Government of the United States, and I cannot doubt that his Majesty's Government fully reciprocates that disposition. Upon every account, I am glad to see these two powerful States living upon terms of honorable and mutual confidence, each relying upon the peaceful councils of the other. But it is not to be imputed to me that I am undervaluing this good understanding, or that I am guilty of want of respect to the United States, or even of discretion as an individual member of Parliament, if, on this occasion, I do not lose sight of those circumstances of a perma nent nature which belong to the fixed policy of the United States, and to those motives of action which, however dormant at present, would probably be revived, under contingencies that, in the course of events, may hereafter arise—contingencies, which the views and passions of the American people would not fail to turn to account for the attainment of a long cherished and favorite object..

"At all periods of our history, the House of Commons has held topics of this nature to be fair grounds of parliamentary consideration. Jealousy, for instance, of the aggrandizement of the house of Bourbon, has always been held an element entitled to enter into every general discussion affecting the balance of power in Europe, and I am sure there is nothing in the general character of Democratic Republics or in the past conduct of the United States, from which we can infer, that their aspirations after power and aggrandizement are less steadily kept in view than those of an absolute monarch in Europe. In looking to the future, let us consult the experience of the past. But, in the case of the New World, we have something more than the history of the last thirty years to guide our judgment. The views and sentiments of those who, during that period, have directed or influenced the affairs of the United States, have been brought before us by the publication of their correspondence. I am afraid the living statesmen of this country have scarcely had time to made themselves acquainted with those views and sentiments, as they stand disclosed in the memoirs and correspondence of a deceased statesman of America, I mean the late Mr. Jefferson, a man who, from the period of their first declaration of independence—a declaration of which he was the author to the close of his life, seems to have possessed the greatest ascendency in the councils of his country, and whose avowed principles and views appear to become every day more predominant in the public feelings of his countrymen.

"In respect to the Gulf of Mexico, and the immense interests, commercial, colonial, and maritime, which are closely connected with the navigation of that Gulf, these memoirs are full of instruction—I might say, of admonitions — well deserving the most serious attention of the people of this country. I will not trouble the House with any long extracts from them; but I cannot deny myself the opportunity of pointing their attention to a few passages, which show how soon the United States, after they became a separate nation, fixed their eye upon the Gulf of Mexico, and how steadily and successfully they have watched and seized every opportunity to acquire dominion and ascendency in that part of the world. Within seven years after the time when their independence had been established, and finally recognized in 1783, we find them setting up a claim of positive right to the free navigation of the Mississippi, from its source to the Gulf of Mexico; and it is not a little curious to see what was the opportunity they took of asserting this right against Spain, a power which had materially assisted them in obtaining their independence. In the year 1790, it will be recollected that a dispute had arisen between England and Spain respecting Nootka Sound..

Whilst these two countries were arming, and every thing appeared to threaten war between them, the United States thought that they saw, in the embarrassments of Spain, an opening to claim this navigation as of right. Whether such a claim could or could not be sustained by any principle of the law of nations, is a question which I will not stop to examine. The affirmative was at once boldly assumed by America, and her demand proceeded upon that assumption. The right once so affirmed, what does the House think was the corollary which the Government of the United States built upon their assertion of that supposed right? I will give it in the words of Mr. Jefferson himself, not a private individual, but the Secretary of State, conveying the instructions of his Government to Mr. Carmichael, then the American envoy at Madrid:-'You know,' writes Mr. Jefferson, that the navigation cannot be practised without a port, where the sea and river vessels may meet and exchange loads, and where those employed about them may be safe and unmolested. The right to use a thing comprehends a right to the means necessary to its use, and without which it would be useless.' I know not what the expounders of the law of nations in the old world will have to say to this novel and startling doctrine. In this instruction, which is dated the 2d of August, 1790, the principle is only laid down in the abstract.

"I will now show the House the special application of it to the claim in question, by quoting another letter from Mr. Jefferson to Mr. Short, the American envoy at Paris, dated only eight days after the former, namely, the 10th of August. It is as follows: 'The idea of ceding the island of New Orleans could not be hazarded to Spain in the first step; it would be too disagreeable at first view; because this island, with its town, constitutes, at present, their principal settlement in that part of their dominions, (Louisiana,) containing about three thousand white inhabitants, of every age and sex. Rea son and events, however, may, by little and little, familiarize them to it. That we have a right to some spot as an entrepot for our commerce may be at once affirmed. I suppose this idea (the cession of New Orleans) too much even for the Count de Montmorin at first, and that, therefore, you will find it prudent to urge, and get him to recommend to the Spanish court, only in general terms, a port near the mouth of the river, with a circumjacent territory sufficient for its support, well defined, and extra-territorial to Spain, leaving the idea to future growth.'

"Contrary to the expectation of the United States when those instructions were given, Great Britain and Spain settled their differences without an appeal to arms; and, in consequence, these practical applications of the law of nations were no longer pressed by the United States. Soon after, Spain became involved in war with France, and that war terminated in her being compelled to cede Louisiana to the latter power. In 1803, that whole province was sold by France to the United States. By this purchase they acquired not only New Orleans, but a very extensive territory within the Gulf of Mexico. I next go to the year 1806. Mr. Jefferson was then no longer Secretary of State; he had been raised to the more important post of President of the United States. In that character we find him writing to Mr. Monroe, then the American minister in London, in the following terms: 'We begin to broach the idea, that we consider the whole Gulf stream as of our own waters, in which hostilitics and cruising are to be frowned on for the present, and prohibited so soon as either consent or force will permit us.' The letter, from which this is an extract, is dated the 4th of May, 1806.

"If the United States 'broached' this idea in 1806, they are not likely to have aban doned it in 1819, when, in addition to Louisiana, they procured, by treaty with Spain, the further important cession of the Floridas. That it is a growing rather than a