Texas, he said, had a right to enter into a treaty of annexation if she chose; and who would deny her that right? Could she not dispose of herself as she pleased? And did it not follow that the United States had a corresponding and an equal right to receive her? The right of property implied the right of the proprietor to sell, and the correlative right of every other person to purchase.

But it was said the ratification would involve us in a war with Mexico.

So he himself thought in 1836, when Texas was a rebellious province;" but since the battle of San Jacinto, Mexico had not made a single military movement toward recovering her lost dominions. She had done nothing that deserved the name of war. Appealing to the gasconading proclamation of Mexico, the senator from Missouri had asked, "Is this peace?" The orders to the home squadron, and the army of observation sent to the Sabine, to watch the movements of Mexico, should any be made, and promptly report them to head quarters, that they might as promptly be reported to congress, the senator had pronounced an act of war. If to employ a corps of observation was to make war, then we were at war with the powers in the West Indies, on the Mediterranean, and on the coast of Africa; for we had squadrons in every sea to protect our commerce, and to make war on pirates. The proclamations of Mexico, and the counter proclamations and defiances of Texas, he did not consider war, as did the senators on the other side.

Mr. M'Duffie referred to the proposition to Mexico made by Mr. Clay, when secretary of state under Mr. Adams, in 1825, to purchase Texas, when the war between Spain and Mexico was still in existence. So in 1829, when Mexico was invaded by a large army, and her ports were blockaded, Mr. Van Buren, by order of Gen. Jackson, made to Mexico a proposition to purchase Texas.

Having advocated the right to receive Texas, he proceeded to show the duty of making the treaty. Great Britain should not be allowed to obtain the control of Texas by a treaty of guaranty stipulating for extensive commercial privileges. He had never till now realized the justice of Mr. Monroe's declaration, that no European power must ever be permitted to establish a colony on this continent. And he urged the danger to the slave property of the south, if Great Britain should get control of Texas. They had a right to demand from the government protection to their property. Annexation, too, would operate as a safety-valve to let off their superabundant slave population, which would render them more happy, and the whites more secure. And with regard to the time of annexation, he adopted the language of Gen. Jackson, now or never."

Immediately after the treaty was rejected, Mr. Benton gave notice of

a bill for the annexation of Texas, with the consent of Mexico. On the 10th of April, pursuant to notice, he brought in the bill, which authorized and advised the president to open negotiations with Mexico and Texas for adjusting boundaries, and annexing Texas to the United States, on the following bases:

1st. The boundary to be in the desert prairie west of the Nueces, and along the highlands and mountain heights which divide the waters of the Mississippi from those of the Rio del Norte, and to latitude 42 degrees north.

2d. The people of Texas, by a legislative act or otherwise, to express their assent to annexation.

3d. A state to be called "Texas," with boundaries fixed by herself, and an extent not exceeding that of the largest state in the union, to be admitted into the union by virtue of this act, on an equal footing with the original states.

4th. The remainder of the territory, to be called "The South-west Territory," and to be held and disposed of by the United States as one of their territories.

5th. Slavery to be forever prohibited in the northern half of the annexed territory.

6th. The assent of Mexico to such annexation and boundary to be obtained by treaty, or to be dispensed with when congress may deem such assent unnecessary.

7th. Other details to be adjusted by treaty so far as they may come within the scope of the treaty-making power.

On presenting his bill, Mr. Benton spoke nearly two hours. He said his was not a new burst of affection for the possession of the country, as his writings a quarter of a century ago would testify. He disapproved the course of the executive in not having first consulted congress. The rejection of the treaty having wiped out all cause of offense to Mexico, he thought it best to commence again, and at the right end—with the legislative branch, by which means we should proceed regularly and constitutionally. As to the boundary, he had followed the basis laid down by Jefferson, fixing, as the limit to be adopted in settling the boundary with Spain, all the territory watered by the tributaries to the Mississippi, and had made it applicable to Mexico and Texas. He did not attach so much importance to the consent of Mexico as to make it an indispensable condition, yet he regarded it as something to be respectfully sought for. But if it were not obtained, it was left to the house to say when that consent became unnecessary. He wished to continue in amity with Mexico. Those who underrated the value of a good understanding with her, knew nothing of what they spoke. Mexico

took the products of our farms, and returned the solid silver of her mines. Our trade with her was constantly increasing. In 1821, the year in which she became independent, we received from her $80,000; in 1835, $8,500,000. When we began to sympathize with Texas, this trade rapidly fell off, until it got down to one million and a half. As the earliest and most consistent friend of Texas, he desired peace with Mexico, in order to procure the ultimate annexation of Texas. If Mexico, blind to her interests, should refuse to let Texas take her natural position as a part of the valley of the Mississippi, let congress say in what case the consent of Mexico might cease to be necessary.

Mr. Benton severely censured that party, who, while an armistice was subsisting between Mexico and Texas, which bid fair to lead to peace, rushed in with a firebrand to disturb these relations of amity. For this act they must stand condemned in the eyes of Christendom. Every wise man must see that Texas and Mexico were not naturally parts of a common country. The settlements of Mexico had never taken the direction of Texas. In a north-eastern direction, they had not extended much over the Rio Grande; they had come merely to the pastoral regions, but had never professed strength enough to subdue the sugar and cotton sections. He alluded to his own far back prophecies and writings concerning Texas. Messrs. Walker and Woodbury he termed "Texas neophytes," who had been so anxious to make great demonstrations of love for Texas. For himself he had no such anxiety, because his senti ments had always been known. With him it was not a question or never," but Texas then, now, and always.

now

Mr. Benton said he had provided against another Missouri agitation. For those who regarded slavery as a great moral evil, in which he, perhaps, did not differ much from them, there was a provision which would neutralize the slave influence. He would not join the fanatics on either side those who were running a muck for or against slavery.

Mr. M'Duffie replied to Mr. Benton in a long, desultory speech, apparently intended rather to provoke by satire or irony, and to excite laughter, than to convince by argument. He remarked at the conclusion of his speech, that the bill of Mr. Benton was as likely as the treaty to bring us into a war with Mexico.

Mr. Benton, rising immediately, exclaimed, "But with this great difference! this great difference! that my bill refers the question of war with Mexico to congress, where all questions of war belong, and the negotiators of this treaty made war themselves! They, the president and his secretary of state, made the war themselves, and made it unconstitutionally, perfidiously, clandestinely, and piratically. The secret orders to our army and navy were piratical; for they were without law,

and to waylay and attack a friendly power with whom we have a treaty of amity; and as a member of a court martial, I would sentence to be shot any officer of the army and navy who should dare to attack Mexican troops, or ships, or cities, under that order. Officers are to obey lawful orders, and no others; and they are not to make war by virtue of any presidential orders, until congress has declared it." Mr. B. proceeded at some length to contrast his bill with the treaty, from which, he said, it was as different as light from darkness. It was respectful to Mexico, requiring her to be consulted before, not after the treaty. It assumed her consent to be necessary now, in the present state of the question between her and Texas; but it supposed a time when it would not be necessary, and of which congress was to judge. The ratification of the treaty would have been the adoption, by the senate, of the war made by the president and secretary.

Mr. M'Duffie had taken exception to Mr. Benton's application of the word neophyte to the new friends of Texas. Mr. B. here indulged in a strain of mingled humor and satire. "The word can imply nothing offensive or derogatory. It is, indeed, a chaste and classic phrase, known to the best writers, both sacred and profane. St. Paul uses it in his epistles, (the Greek copies;) and, after naming him, no higher authority is wanted for what is gentlemanly and scholastic, as well as what is pious and Christian; but bring me a dictionary, (speaking to a page of the senate;) bring me Richardson, letter N, and see what he says."

The book was brought. Mr. B. read:

"NEOPHYTE—In French, neophyte; in Italian, neofito; in Spanish, neophyto; Latin, neophytus; Greek, neophutos; from neos, new, and phuton, a plant, a new plant; figuratively, a new convert; one newly implanted (s. c.) in the church; and consequently, newly converted to the Christian faith; one newly initiated, newly introduced or employed."

"This (resumed Mr. B.) is Richardson's definition and etymology; and nothing can be more classic or innocent. It is pure Greek, only modified in sound and termination, in going through six languages; and, both literally and figuratively, has an innocent and decent signification." After some farther play upon the meaning and application of this word, he proceeds: "But to be done with joking. The senator is certainly a new plant, and an exotic, in the Texan garden; and those friends of his, the defense of whom has called him from a sick bed to do what he has not done, defend them-a task which would indeed require 'angels and ministers of grace,' these friends of his, they are also new plants and exotics and strange plants in the same good garden; and of them I must say, moreover, what I cannot and will not say of him

they are intrusive, noxious, and poisonous weeds in that fair garden! I remember the time when they flung the whole garden, as a worthless incumbrance, away. And they enter it now, as the serpent did Eden, with deceit in the face and death in the heart."

Mr. Benton then proceeds to the discussion of the treaty; and in the course of his remarks, says: "The senator undertakes to answer my speech, but he avoids all the hard places. He says nothing of the two thousand miles of Mexican territory, (over and above Texas, and to which no Texian soldier ever went, except to be killed or captured,) and which, by the treaty is annexed to the United States. He says nothing about the private engagement for war against Mexico, and sending our troops to join president Houston. He says nothing about this open assumption of the purse and the sword; nothing about the admission of new states by treaty, without the consent of congress; nothing about the loss of Mexican commerce, and the alienation of all the South American states from our cause; nothing about the breach of the armistice, and breach of treaties with a friendly power; nothing about the Duff Green stories for making pretexts for predetermined conclusions; nothing, in fact, to the pregnant indications which show that the treaty was made, not to get Texas into the union, but to get the south out of it. He defends the feelings, not the doings of his friends. The great objections to the treaty are in i encroachments upon New Mexico, Chihuahua, Coahuila, and Tamaulipas; in its adoption of the Texian war; in its adoption of that war unconstitutionally; in its destruction of our trade with Mexico; in our breach of treaties, in the alienation of Mexico and all the South American states from us, our permanent loss of trade and friendship with those powers: and the seeds of disunion (dissolution of our union) so carefully and so thickly planted in it. Above all, he says nothing to the great objection to admitting new states by treaty-an act which congress only can do. These are the great ob. jections to the treaty; and all these the defender of the president and his secretary leaves undefended.

* "The senator from South Carolina, in his zeal to defend his friends, goes beyond the line of defense and attacks me; he supposes me to have made anti-annexation speeches; and certainly, if he limits the supposition to my speeches against the treaty, he is right. But that treaty, far from securing the annexation of Texas, only provides for the disunion of these states. The annexation of the whole country as a territory, and that upon the avowed ground of laying it all out into slave states, is an open preparation for a Missouri question and a dissolution of the union. I am against that; and for annexation in the mode pointed out in my bill. I am for Texas-for Texas with peace and