Government take the most decided measures for proving to this Government that it cannot thus act with impunity, British subjects resident here will remain defenceless, and their property be at the mercy of a set of men who disregard their most solemn engagements whenever such interfere with either their caprice or rapacity. From the tone of their notes to me anybody not on the spot would imagine that dire necessity had alone compelled them thus to act, whereas in reality 6,000,000 of hard dollars have actually passed through their hands within the last half-year, to say nothing of the immense amount of church property in this district alone which has been dissipated in a manner, according to public rumour, utterly discreditable to the members of the Government. A waiting your Lordship's instructions, I have, &c. C. LENNOX WYKE. P.S. I have herewith the honour to transmit translation of another long private note from Señor Zamacona, containing only a repetition of the same sort of arguments he has used before. When I reply to it I shall merely acknowledge reception of a communication which in no way really affects the question at issue. Lord J. Russell. C. L. W. (Inclosure 1.)-Decree. (Translation.) Mexico, July 17, 1861. THE citizen Benito Juarez, Constitutional President of the United Mexican States, to the inhabitants, know ye: That the Sovereign Congress of the Union has deemed it well to address me the following Decree : ART. I. From the date of this law, the Government of the Union will recover the complete product of the Federal revenues, deducting from them only the expenses of the administration of collecting, and all payments are suspended for two years, including the assignments for the loan made in London and for the foreign Conventions. II. The maritime Custom-Houses and all the other collecting offices of the Federal revenues will surrender all their products into the general Treasury, being exclusively subject to the orders of the Ministry of Finances. On the 15th and on the last day of each month they will forward to the Ministry a statement of their receipts and disbursements. III. Within the term of one month the Government will form and publish an economical estimate of all public expenses, based on the estimate of the 31st December, 1855, conveniently reduced. The Government is to subject itself to this economical estimate from the day of its publication, and Congress only has the faculty of making changes afterwards. IV. The payments in this estimate are to be made in the following manner: 1. The armed force in campaign and in garrison. The material of war. The invalids and disabled soldiers. These payments are to be made complete, but no surplus can be admitted. 2. The civil list in active service and the military list not in service. These payments, if under 300 dollars, are to be made complete; if above 300 dollars they are to be made in strict and equal proportion. 3. The classes pensioned by the nation are to be paid in strict and equal proportion, if the classes above mentioned have been paid before, as is ordered by the Decree. V. If an order, not included in the estimates, is sent to the General Treasury by Government, an observation must be made by a communication of the Government: if repeated, the Treasurer is to communicate it immediately to Congress. If the Treasurer does not make the observations here mentioned, he is to be destituted immediately. VI. A superior Committee of Hacienda is instituted, composed of one president and four members named by Government, with the sanction of Congress. Two of them, at least, must be creditors of the nation. VII. The attributes of the Junta are the following: 1. To pay the loan made in London and the foreign Conventions; 2. To pay the creditors not comprised in the law of the 30th November, 1850; 3. To pay legal and posterior credits against the nation up to the 30th June of this year, including those comprised in the law of the 17th December, 1860; 4. To receive the payment of what is due to the nation, if it be unknown to the collecting offices; 5. To administer and sell the nationalized clergy property, and to execute all the attributes of the law of disamortization and nationalization; 6. To make arrangements, with the sanction of Government, with all the persons interested in, or that have any business relative to, nationalized property; 7. To distribute all the funds collected amongst the creditors of the nation. The product of the suppressed convents is to be applied to the creditors of the conducta of Laguna Seca, and after covering the estimates of the nunneries, the remainder is to be distributed to the creditors in the foreign Conventions. VIII. In order that the Junta may be able to fill the attributes conferred upon it by Government, the following is assigned to it: All the "pagarés" existing in the special disamortization office; the product of all pending redemption; the captials not redeemed belonging to the nation, the buildings of the suppressed convents, the lands and all existing materials. In the States and territories all the lands, convents, and buildings comprised in the law of nationalization, and all the products, except the 20 per cent. belonging to the same States and territories. The buildings and capitals expressly excepted by Government are not comprised in this Article. IX. All this property will form a fund distinct of public credit; the employers in the district, the chiefs ("gefes superiores") of the Finance Department in the States and territories are to forward immediately to the Junta titles, deeds, notices, and corresponding documents. X. In the special law published for the conversion of public debt, the part to be delivered by the States is to be fixed and regulated. XI. The Government is authorized to publish a decree taxing tobacco: this tax is to be collected for the Federal Treasury in all the Republic. XII. The Government is authorized to increase, during the remaining months of this year, the alcabala of one-half per cent. more on national products, excepting the articles of agricultural and manufacturing industry specified in the Decree of the 24th September, 1855. XIII. The duty of "contra-registro" on foreign goods is increased to double in the district; this increase is to be paid as long as the Government may deem it necessary to fulfil the object of the following Article. XIV. With the new product of the alcabala, the "contraregistro" and the tax imposed upon tobacco, the Government will pay with preference all the debts contracted from the 29th of last May, and all those that it may contract for the re-establishment of public tranquillity, leaving extant all the orders that have been given on account of "refacciones" for the payment of the money taken in Laguna Seca. XV. The Governors of States and the employés of the Collecting Department have no intervention whatever in the Federal revenues. XVI. The Government is authorized to reform and organize within one more month all the offices on such a base that their estimates be reduced, and is authorized to increase the salaries of some employés, and to reduce their number. Given in the Sessions Hall of the Congress of the Union, on the 17th of July, 1861. GABINO BUSTAMANTE, Deputy President. E. ROBLES GIL, Deputy Secretary. For which I order that it be printed, published, circulated, and given due respect. SIR, Given in the National Palace in Mexico, the 17th July, 1861. BENITO JUAREZ. (Inclosure 2.)—Sir C. Wyke to Señor Zamacona. Mexico, July 19, 1861. A PRINTED paper, as strange in compilation as in the nature of its contents, was this day hawked about the principal thoroughfares of the city, and has now, I see, been reprinted in the columns of this evening's "Siglo." According to the wording of this document, it would appear that Congress has though fit to make a free gift of other people's property to the Government of the Republic, by suspending for the space of two years the payment of all assignments, as well to the London bondholders as to the parties interested in the foreign Conventions. Until I hear from you to the contrary, I am bound to consider this announcement in the light of a falsehood; for I cannot bring myself to believe that a Government which respects itself could sanction a gross violation of its most sacred obligations to other nations, and then proclaim the fact of their having done so in a manner which, if possible, aggravates the offence. That the Representatives of those nations who are thus slighted and injured should be allowed to learn, in the first instance, by handbills circulated in the streets, that you have repudiated your engagements, is as unaccountable as the policy which could dictate a measure alike fatal to the character and credit of the Republic. I will not dwell on other obnoxious paragraphs of this publication, as at present I cannot believe it to be authentic; for when your Excellency did me the honour of calling on me to-day, you in no way alluded to a subject which would otherwise surely have formed the chief topic of your conversation. Awaiting a reply at your earliest convenience, I avail, &c. Señor Zamacona. C. LENNOX WYKE. (Inclosure 3.)-Señor Zamacona to Sir C. Wyke. (Translation.) Mexico, July 21, 1861. THE Undersigned, Minister for Foreign Affairs, has had the honour of receiving from his Excellency Sir Charles Lennox Wyke, Her Britannic Majesty's Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary, the note in which his Excellency requests to be informed whether the Decree of the Federal Congress providing for a total suspension of payments, not excepting those of the London bondholders and Diplomatic Conventions, is or is not authentic. His Excellency's request might have been looked upon as anticipated by the explanation the Undersigned had the pleasure of making yesterday at the Legation only a few minutes after the note, to which this is a reply, had been sent to the Foreign Office, indeed while it was yet on its way there; but the private character of that explanation renders it incumbent upon the Undersigned to recapitulate a portion of it in the present communication. In the first place, he begs to assure Sir Charles Wyke that so soon as the Decree of yesterday was made known to him through the Department of Finance, he proposed to bring it at once to the cognizance of his Excellency, though anxious that this step should be preceded by a visit, at which it was the intention of the Undersigned to give Sir Charles Wyke a fuller and more detailed explanation of the Decree in question, its purport, and probable results, than was compatible with the limits of an official note. In the meanwhile, however, the Decree was duly and formally published and printed in the daily newspapers, and this will account for his Excellency the British Minister having seen it before he received either an explanatory communication or a visit from the Undersigned. Sir Charles Wyke will now allow the Undersigned the liberty of stating that he does not consider his Excellency has formed a correct estimate of this Decree, when he says the Congress therein makes a free gift to Government of other people's property. Her Majesty's worthy Representative likewise goes on to qualify the act of Congress as a total suspension of payments for the space of two years; still it will not escape his keen judgment that the application of the term "free gift" to what is merely the act of ratifying certain obligations, and specifying the mode of fulfilling the same, amounts to a misnomer. Neither can the Undersigned agree with Sir Charles Wyke in his opinion that the Decree in question is a violation of Mexico's most sacred obligations towards other nations. Such a phrase would imply the idea of a voluntary and deliberate act; whereas the Republic, in suspending the payments due to the Diplomatic Conventions, yielded not to the dictates of its own free will, but solely to the force of circumstances, which have rendered it morally and physically impossible for the nation to continue making those payments which have hitherto been made by means of the most strenuous exertions. When, then, such efforts have been unavailing, |