where they could scarcely feel the rays of the general government. Senator White of Tennessee declared that he would rather see the territory to the west of the Mississippi given to France, to Spain, or to any other nation, upon the mere condition that no citizen of the United States should ever settle within its limits, than to have it sold for one hundred millions of dollars, and we retain the sovereignty. So soon as Spain heard of the sale to the United States,* it vigorously protested, because France had covenanted with her never to part with the country, and it declared that it ought to have had the first chance for purchase. For a time it was thought that Spain would not make a peaceful surrender. The French had sent Laussat to Louisiana as a commissioner to receive the district from Spain, before the cession was made to the United States. On the thirtieth of November, 1803, Spain surrendered Louisiana to France. On the twentieth of December, twenty days after, the tricolored standard of France gave place to the American flag.† A recognition of the immense issues which were at stake in the possession of the mouth of the Mississippi river will be had in this rapid statement of the varied means used to maintain the control of it, and the reluctance shown in parting with it. The west was constantly becoming a larger factor in the nation; and, in the manifestation of its discontent at the monopolizing by the east of all the great offices, it succeeded in causing the nation to purchase, for an amount which was then quite exhausting, the outlet to its great river and the country beyond, the wealth of which was only afterwards apprehended. Still New Orleans was, at the time of the purchase, virtually a foreign city, with only a comparatively small American colony in it. Many of the Spanish officers remained as residents, ready to sympathize with any movement hostile to the United States, and they had ultimately to be requested by the governor to reThe purchase of the territory put a stop, however, for some time, to the efforts of the conspirators. C. F. ROBERTSON. move. [TO BE CONTINUED.] * Barbè Mar., p. 345. Gayarrè, S. D., p. 535. + Martin, p. 295. Barbè Mar., p. 352. BOTH SIDES OF THE RIO GRANDÉ. By the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, February 2, 1848, the United States obtained more than half of Mexico. The area gained was equal to one hundred and twenty-seven States as large as Massachusetts, and the area left was equal to one hundred and six. This includes Texas, which was not conceded till that treaty was executed. What next? That has been a growing question for thirty-five years, and is latterly uttered in prominent if not critical tones. Old Mexico, over the Rio Grandé, is rich in fine natural staples. (1) The cabinet woods, as mahogany in its many varieties, rosewood, ebony, lignum vitæ, and many other choice stocks, which enrich our offices, drawing-rooms and boudoirs, and which enter into our more elegant and expensive mechanisms, are found there. Not a few are yet to find their names in commerce and their place in handicraft. What have come to us from the Indies and from African jungles may be had or supplanted in Mexico. (2) Many of the tropical fruits, which come through the Suez Canal and the Straits of Gibraltar, and around Capes Horn and Good Hope, to our wharves and tables, may be found and produced in the fields of this our next door neighbor. The United States is said to import annually fifty million dollars' worth of coffee and seventy million dollars' worth of sugar, which amount Mexico could largely, if not wholly, produce. It is not necessary to repeat the tropical schedule of native products. Before the Mechanics' Association in Boston, not long since, General Grant is reported as saying: "We now do an importation business of nearly $200,000,000 a year of tropical and semi-tropical products. Mexico could produce the whole of them if she had railroads to give her an outlet for them." (3)*Of the cereals, it may be enough to quote Williams' Government Survey of Mexico for the United States, in 1851. Where he speaks of corn, one is inclined to discount the official statement that, in favorable circumstances, there can be three crops a year, "each yielding seventy bushels to the acre." (4) The precious metals are now the leading and more immediate source of wealth in Mexico. No country can attract the world in this interest as does Mexico. The more staple and civilizing industries of agriculture and manufactures have been underestimated and neglected in the passion for native gold and silver. That mineral country, ours and the Mexicans', is producing year by year two-thirds of all the mined silver of the world. Since the discovery of gold in California, in 1848, the section of Mexico which the United States took produced, in twenty-five years, $250,000,000 of gold more than the whole world had produced. in the preceding three hundred and fifty years. Yet in our division of Mexico it is said that we took the inferior part as to the precious metals. The commerce of Mexico is yet in its infancy, being reported as $400,000,000 internal, with exports and imports about $500,000,000 each. And it must be considered that this amount of commerce, domestic and foreign, has been attained while transportation was quite commonly on the backs of men and mules, and over miserable trails and undredged rivers. At the same time agriculture and mining have been pursued without the applied sciences of the nineteenth century. What, then, may not be expected under an importation or invasion of the laboratory and scientific mechanics, as seen in the steel plough, the cart, the factory and the locomotive? The population of Mexico is about 10,000,000; by the census of 1880 it was 9,577,279. This gives an average density about the same as in the United States. This population is mainly of the aboriginal and prehistoric race, sometimes called Aztec. About one-fourth of the Mexican blood has a European tinge; only a little of even this one-fourth is Spanish, for so terribly degrading and oppressive had been the Spanish rule from the conquest that, in 1810, the native race revolted, in 1821 established their independence of Spain, and in 1829 banished every Spaniard. As a people the Mexicans are spasmodic, lacking the mental nerve and persistent energy of purpose which are indispensable in building a State. They show a tendency to decay and extincture, already so manifest in Arizona, New Mexico and lands farther north, once populous with them. The kind of civilization introduced into New Spain in the century following Cortez and Coronado, with other European and United States influences, have done much to hasten that decay. The historical statement, generally conceded, is a humiliating one, that the pagan life of those pre historic peoples was degraded by the advent of civilized and Christian people, so called. As European and American influences went in, morals deteriorated, government became less just, and life was not as safe, easy and happy. The instability and almost imbecility of the Mexicans for self government are seen in the fact that, in the thirty-three years following their conceded independence—1824-1857—they had thirty-five governments and seventy-two executives or administrations. From what has now been shown to be the agriculture, mining, mechanics, transportation and civilization of Mexico, it will be seen that the forces she has within herself for development are mainly of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The foreign forces now developing Mexico are four-English, French, German and American. In a general and inexact division of business, it may be said that the English have the cotton and other relative branches of the foreign trade in staples; the French have the dry goods trade; the Germans the metal wares; while the Americans are assuming the mining and railroad interests. The struggle for foreign preeminence in Mexico is showing itself more and more as between the United States and England. It is easy to be seen that Mexico, rich naturally and so weak nationally, and so temptingly exposed, is liable to come under the leading influence of one of the four nations named, whether by discriminating diplomacy and favoring treaties, or by a protectorate or by absorption, might be a question of time. Each has had its scheme and endeavor to obtain a portion of the old or undivided Mexico. There was the German colony of 11,000 in Texas, planted under the auspices of Frederick William, Crown Prince of Prussia, while the annexation of that province to the United States was in warm agitation. In 1846 the scheme was lost, when territory and colony became a part of the United States. Since 1759, and their total defeat on the Plains of Abraham, the French have not been without a longing and purpose, if not a plan, to reinstate themselves in North America. In 1838-39 France made a demand on Mexico of $600,000 as indemnity for damage to French interests during Mexican revolutions. As the demand could not be met, France blockaded the Mexican ports, but in the presence of England and the United States she did not presume to go in and take possession. Mexico pleaded inability on the ground that she was "a nation always agitated by revolution: as such suffered all the consequences of a state of revolution, popular tumults, robberies, plunderings, assassinations and unjust devices." If foreigners came in for trade, they must do it at their own risk. "If it was obligatory on the government to indemnify foreigners for all the exactions and expenses they have endured, all the treasures of the republic would not suffice." This was, perhaps, a good defense, but also a confession of weakness that exposed her to the seizure of the strong. Before the transfer of California, France saw that that territory was floating quite adrift from the central government of Mexico, and, as a waif, might be picked up on the high seas of any civil storm. Hence, she kept a good fleet in California waters till others took the prize. In 1860, in the distracted condition of Mexico, the ecclesiastical and aristocratic party are said to have had agents in Europe to find a Spanish prince who would accept their crown. This agency may or may not have led to it; but, when the United States were in a gigantic war for life, England, France and Germany entered into an alliance to demand of Mexico a better government and the payment of certain dues. The allied fleets landed 25,000 troops, and Maximilian was to succeed to the halls of the Montezumas. When, however, the United States saw their way clear through their domestic troubles to make an energetic intimation to Napoleon, the foreign troops were withdrawn, and poor Maximilian, abandoned to his visions, was driven to the wall by an outraged people, and shot as an invader. The Abbé Domenech unfolds the whole French scheme in this invasion: "Behind the Mexican expedition there was more than an empire to found, a nation to save, markets to create, thousands of millions to develop; there was a world tributary to France, happy to submit to our sympathetic influence, to receive their supplies from us, and to ascribe to us their resurrection to the political and social life of a civilized people. The abbé does not indicate how far up into the ancient Louisiana this "empire" was to extend. Nor may we suppose that it is only a canal interest that France is taking on the isthmus of Tehuantepec. From that dark thirteenth of September, 1759, at Quebec, to these late days, she has not ceased to mourn the affliction of that day, and to trail her flag to a sad refrain, Even as late as the last National Exposition, the French commissioner renewed the grieving. We must think that they watch for the day when they may lay aside mourning. What Napoleon said to Livingstone when selling Louisiana, has in it enough of truth and of regret to ensure its remembrance with Frenchmen: "A magnificent bargain; an empire for a |