from the ordinary pursuits of business which can not be spared with out injury. But very many rail roads have been built, both in this country and in Great Britain, in which one or both of those conditions have been violated. Disregard of the latter is universally regarded as one of the principal causes of the financial convulsions in England; and our own expenditures, though comparatively very small, have combined with other causes in producing much embarrassment in the commercial business of this country. We hope that this embar rassment may have a favorable effect in checking what is in danger of becoming among ourselves a railway mania, to illustrate and prove which danger we will state only two facts; that railroads are now being built in the state of Vermont, which will cost about ten millions dollars, and that more than sixty applications for railroad charters have been made to the legislature of Massachusetts at its present session. We ought, also, to remember that in Great Britain, no money is sent out of the country when a railroad is built, that the material and labor are whol. ly British, while in our own case, we often purchase English iron with American gold.

But we shall take a very superfi cial view of the comparative bene fits of railways to the two countries, if we do not consider the relative size, and previous advantages of the two nations. In England, owing to the excellent public roads, and to canals, every part of the country was accessible at a moderate expense of time and money. The railway was therefore a convenience, not an article of prime necessity. In our own land, notwith standing our rivers, canals and lakes, there are vast regions from which the expense of transporting produce to market greatly exceeds the cost of producing it, and where the trav eler during a considerable part of

the year must plod at the rate of two to four miles an hour.* We will refer, to show some of the benefits of railroads to a thinly settled country, to the Michigan Central road. This road is about two hundred miles long, extending from Detroit directly across the state. Before it was built, it was necessary for the farmer residing fifty or a hundred miles from that city, to carry his wheat or flour by wagons over very bad roads; and as the soil of the central parts of the state, though productive, was not exuberantly fertile like a great part of Illinois and Wisconsin, the tide of emigration seemed likely to be divert ed from the state. By building the road, a belt of land a hundred and sixty miles long and forty broad, is brought within twenty miles of a market, and we do not consider it an extravagant estimate, to assume that this tract, embracing more than four million acres of land, will within ten years be worth on an average, two dollars an acre more than if the road had not been constructed. Similar calculations might be presented, respecting roads which are chartered or proposed, and which will traverse the immense prairies of the northwestern states or the cotton fields of the south. Whether the project for a road to the Pacific should be regarded as an object of serious consideration for the present generation, we will not say: we would remark, however, that it might have been built for a smaller amount than the Mexican war has

volted world to the obedience of Christ; we can not but contemplate her future prospects with deep and anxious interest. We earnestly desire that she may adopt such meas

ures that her ignorant and degraded population may be enlightened, that her poor may be fed, and that the light of the gospel may shine forth, enlightening all her dwellings.

So we are to have peace with Mexico. The form of a treaty has been agreed to by the President and Senate; and it only remains for our General-in-chief and our diplomatic commissioners to find at Queretaro, or elsewhere or to set up if they can not find some shadow or pretense of a government from which that treaty, as we call it, shall receive some sort of ratification. Then the war which is said to have been begun" by the act of Mexico," will be declared to be ended, "by the act of Mexico."

This whole matter of making a treaty, is little else than a sham. All men know-the President and Senate not excepted--that there is not in Mexico any government that is competent to make a treaty in behalf of the Mexican people; much less is there in that unhappy country, any government which is competent to keep a treaty. How is it then, that we are to have peace? Setting aside the formalities of negotiation and ratification, those thin pretenses under which the arrangement is set forth, and looking simply at the arrangement itself as an arrangement having all its validity from the will of our government, what is it? Simply the arrange ment which was recommended eighteen months ago by Mr. Calhoun, by Gen. Taylor, by Com. Perry, and indeed by every man who looked at the case with even half an eye. We announce our determination to keep a certain portion of the Mexican territory which we have conquered and which is as

One faction

conveniently contiguous to our own as Naboth's vineyard was to Ahab's palace grounds. We draw a line upon the map, marking with "red ink" from ocean to ocean; and assuming that line for our frontier, we undertake to defend it. Beyond the line which we have drawn, there may be pronunciamentos, revolu tions, dictatorships; and we give ' ourselves no concern. But this side of the line, we hold the sovereignty, and we will keep it. Along that line we will maintain whatever mili. tary force shall be necessary to keep invasion at a distance. after another-ascendant for the hour at the city of the Aztecs, may swagger about the honor of "the magnanimous Mexican nation," and may swear to restore the integrity of the republic. But along the line which we have made our boundary, our forts and stations, commanding all the passes, and garrisoned with a standing force of twenty thousand men, shall keep the territory we have conquered, so that no Mexi can shall dare to show himself in arms, till it shall be occupied with a population of our own citizens able to keep it for themselves. Nobody supposes that the paper called a treaty, whatever pretended ratifica tion it may receive at Queretaro or elsewhere, can give us any right to those provinces which we had not before, or can enable us to hold those provinces with one soldier less or one gun less than if the farce of negotiation and ratification had nev er been enacted. We get peace not by a compact with

any

actual Mex

ican government, not by a compact to which the Mexican people are in any sense a party, or which they will regard as of any binding force, but only by ceasing from the active prosecution of the war, while we content ourselves with holding by mere strength just as much of the Mexican territory as we choose to keep.

And what have we got? Peace, such as it is. Peace, guarded with a standing army of twenty thousand men, and a line of military stations stretched across the continent. And what else? We were to have "indemnity for the past and security for the future," and nothing less "the whole or none." "Indemnity for the past," as the past was at the commencement of the war, was estimated to be some five millions of dollars due from the Mexican government to citizens of the United States. "Security for the future," was security against any depredations on our citizens hereafter by Mexican functionaries, security in other words, that in all time to come there shall be in Mexico a govern ment not only able and willing to pay its just debts, but able and will ing to restrain its functionaries from all injustice towards our citizens. This is what we were to get. Have we got it? We have expended a hundred millions of treasure,-perhaps it will turn out to be a hundred and fifty millions when the accounts are all settled. We have lost some twenty thousand lives. We give up all our claims against Mexico in be half of our citizens, and become bound to pay those claims ourselves. And what do we get? We have conquered for Texas a boundary which she could never have conquered for herself, and which she never claimed but in the merest gas. conade. We have gained not for the Union, but for that one state, an area of three hundred and twentyfour thousand square miles. We have made that state of Texas more

than seven times as large as the "empire state" of New York. All the public lands this side of "the Rio Grande, from its mouth to its source and thence due north to the 42° north latitude," are the public lands, not of the United States, but only of the state of Texas. What else have we gained? "We, the people of the United States," what have we gained for ourselves by this lavish expenditure of treasure and of blood? We have gained Upper California and that part of New Mexico which lies beyond the Rio Grande. Is this our indemnity for the past? No, we pay for it, not only the hundred or hundred and fifty millions which the war has cost us, but fifteen millions more. For Upper California and half of New Mexico, with their wild mountain ranges and their vast deserts, which is all that we get, we givebesides renouncing our claim for five millions of indemnity-no less a price in money than we gave for Louisiana including the Mississippi and all that lies beyond it. No man will pretend that we give Mexico a dime less than all the real value of, whatever we retain beyond the Rio Grande.

Where then is that "indemnity," for which the war was to be prolonged indefinitely? And where is our "security for the future?"? Will any man tell us that the treaty, so called, affords us any security? What guarantee have we that henceforward there shall be in Mexico a government more honest or more capable than the government which they have had heretofore? our security against Mexican aggression lies in our power to defend the line which we have taken-a security identical with what we should have had if we had taken that line a twelvemonth ago, and had then announced our purpose to defend it against whatever government or whatever anarchy might dare to assail it.

All

Such, then, according to present appearances, is to be the termina

tion of the war in which we involv. ed ourselves by admitting Texas into our confederacy. The gain, as was expected, and as was probably intended, redounds to Texas and to the holders of Texan scrip. For all this addition to her territory-for the acquisition of millions of acres to which she had no more shadow of a right than she has to the island of Cuba, Texas pays nothing. The "man in the blanket," that renegade from civilization, Sam Hous ton, has outwitted and cheated not only President Tyler and Mr. Calhoun, but President Polk also, and all the democracy of the Union. The whole operation, from the first appeal to Mr. Tyler's vanity down to the present moment, shows that Houston is sharp in a bargain-too sharp for those with whom he has been dealing. Through his adroitness, the quarrel between Mexico and Texas, which Texas could not settle, has been settled by the resist less weight of our power and our resources. We have taken up the quarrel as our own; the common treasure and the common blood of all the United States, have been squandered in the conflict; and the result is, that Texas is to be the greatest, and erelong the most powerful state in the Union.

But after all the case is not as bad as it might be. In one respect the peace-supposing that it turns out to be a peace in the manner propo sed-is even honorable to our country. We might have taken from Mexico much more of her territory than we have taken; for we had much more in our undisturbed possession, and some other frontier, still more advanced, might have been defended as easily as that which we assume for our boundary. But we content ourselves with comparatively little, when we might have had much. Nor is this all. What we have determined to keep, we might have kept without paying for it, just as easily as we can keep

it after the twenty millions shall have been paid. But we pay at a magnificent rate for all we take. Instead of doing as the British did in China-instead of taking what we think will be convenient for our use, and then exacting an indemnity of twenty millions from those whom we have conquered, we pay the twenty millions ourselves, and the indemnity goes-as of right it should go-to the party that has suffered most, and is most in need of it. All this, we claim, is really creditable to our country. In the long history of conquest and national robbery, since the days of Nimrod, we do not remember any thing half so gener. ous. Alexander of Macedon had some heroic traits; but the thought of paying for any of the countries which he overran with fire and sword, seems not to have occurred to him. The Romans were a remarkably "progressive" people, and they had a "manifest destiny" to fulfill; but when did the Romans pay, or promise to pay, for any of the countries which they conquered and annexed to their widening dominion? When the Huns, the Goths and the Vandals, came down from the North on the decaying Roman empire, as our armies have come down upon enfeebled and decaying Mexico, exe. cuting the vengeance of God, they did not pay for the fair provinces they conquered. The Saracens were an enterprising people in their day; they went on annexing for several ages; but they never paid for Egypt or the Holy Land, or for the pos sessions which they held so long in Spain. The Turks took Constanti nople four centuries ago; but to this day they have never paid for it. In more modern times, Napoleon seems always to have thought that the ex pense of conquering was enough, without assuming the additional ex pense of paying for what he conquered. Nor have the British ever had a thought of taxing themselves to pay for a single acre of all their

conquests in India. So far as our reading informs us, this paying for these Mexican provinces, and paying for them so magnificently, after having conquered them, and while still holding them and expecting to hold them only by mere force, is the first instance of the kind in the history of the world. The paying for these provinces, when we might just as well have them without pay. ing, is certainly creditable to our country; though our taking them and holding them, in the old way of conquest and armed strength, is decidedly vulgar, putting us on a level, in that respect, with other aggressive and conquering races, the British, the French, the Turks and Saracens, the Goths and Vandals, and the old Romans. It is to be hoped that our example, so far as it is creditable, will not be lost upon the world. If other nations who may hereafter pursue the career of conquest, will do as we have done, this Mexican war of ours will be come quite an epoch in history. One improvement may lead to another; and who can tell that ultimately there may not be found some way of conducting wars of invasion and conquest" upon Christian principles ?"

But it is not our purpose to discuss in detail the programme of a peace which has been published under the name of a treaty. The action of the President and Senate on that paper, may be taken as evidence of a purpose on their part to bring the war to a close. We may assume therefore, that the war, so far as active hostilities are implied in the word, is virtually ended; that our armies are to be withdrawn from

their present advanced positions; that the boundary between the ter ritory which we claim and hold as our own, and that which we acknowledge as belonging to Mexico, is to be as described in the paper referred to; that those Mexicans residing this side of the new boundary

who choose to retain their allegiance to Mexico, will be allowed freely to do so and to sell their property and remove, or to remain where they are; while such as do not avail themselves of that privilege, will become citizens of the United States; and that these territories after a sufficient pupilage, and after having become sufficiently populous and properly organized to be invested with sovereignty, are to be admitted as sovereign states of this great Union. Assuming all this as determined, we look to see what is to be the result of it in respect to our public affairs, and how it affects our interests and duties as citizens.

It is obvious, in the first place, that certain great and grave ques tions which have agitated the minds of good citizens, are disposed of. Certain great issues have been be fore the country, but are now no longer to be debated. It is no longer a question what shall be done to bring this most mischievous and demoralizing war to a conclusion. The war is to be ended. It is no longer a question whether our members of Congress ought to vote supplies for the prosecution of the war. All the supplies now needed on account of the war, are supplies to pay the debts already contracted, and supplies to keep the peace upon our new Mexican frontier. It is no longer a question whether the war shall end in the acquisition of territory beyond the western boundary of Texas. The territory is acquired and will never be given up. It would be as wise to expect that Florida will be ceded back to Spain, and Louisiana to the French republic, as to expect that the provinces now acquired will pass again into the possession of Mexico. All these questions belong now to the past. So far as parties have been organized upon these questions, the parties must find some other issues or must be disorganized. Neither the war question in any of its forms,