power can avert her final extinction as an independent nation; yet this ought not to influence us to take advantage of her weakness, nor should it induce us to allow others to do so.

It is asfoolish and unjust to condemn Spain for that exhibition of national pride she evinces in her efforts to retain what little remains of her once extended domains, as it is sycophantal and cowardly to consult England or France in regard to our continental policy, whether in the acquisition of the island of Cuba or any other portion of this continent.

Of twenty-three provinces lost to Spain within the last three hundred years, these two grasping nations-England and France-have wrested from her thirteen of the finest and most valuable of them all, while the United States have acquired two-West and East Florida-by purchase, which has become our settled policy* in as great a degree as it has always been the policy of European nations to acquire dominion by fraud and conquest. In settling upon a line of policy, whether domestic or foreign, this Republic should at all times be governed by considerations of truth and justice; for, strange as it may seem to the superficial observer, it is nevertheless a fact, that the opposite policy-the force and fraud system-recognised in the international code of European nations, has either worked their ruin, or is now rapidly undermining whatever of that slender fabric on which they now rest. Keeping in view these important truths, the President places the acquisition of Cuba upon just and patriotic grounds, and is sustained in this great measure of his administration by the wise statesmen who have gone before him.

Among them are Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, Martin Van Buren, James K. Polk, Edward Everett, Franklin Pierce, and William L. Marcy. The first of these statesmen, Mr. Jefferson, in a letter to President Madison, dated the 27th April, 1809, referring to the policy Napoleon would probably pursue towards the United States, says:

"He ought to be satisfied with having forced her (Great Britain) to revoke the orders on which he pretended to retaliate, and to be particularly satisfied with us, by whose unyielding adherence to principle she has been forced into the revocation. He ought the more to conciliate our good will, as we can be such an obstacle to the new career opening on him in the Spanish colonies. That he would give us the Floridas to withhold intercourse with the residue of those colonies cannot be doubted. But that is no price, because they are ours in the first moment of the first war, and until a war they are of no particular necessity to us. But, although with difficulty, he will consent to our receiving Cuba into our Union, to prevent our aid to Mexico and the other provinces. That would be a price, and I would immediately erect a column on the southernmost limit of Cuba, and inscribe on it a ne plus ultra as to us in that direction. We should then have only to include the north in our confederacy, which would be, of course, in the first war, and we should have such an empire for liberty as she has never surveyed since the creation; and I am persuaded no constitution was ever before so well calculated as ours for

extensive empire and self-government.

"It will not be objected to receiving Cuba that no limit can then be drawn to our future acquisitions. Cuba can be defended by us without a navy, and this develops the principle which ought to limit our views. Nothing should ever be accepted which would require a navy to defend it."

Again, in writing to President Monroe on the 23d June, 1823, he says:

"For certainly her (Cuba's) addition to our confederacy is exactly what is wanting to advance our power as a nation to the point of its utmost interest."

And in another letter to the same, on the 24th October, 1823, he says:

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"I candidly confess that I have ever looked on Cuba as the most interesting addition which could ever be made to our system of States. The control which, with Florida Point, this island would give us over the Gulf of Mexico, and the countries and isthmus bordering on it, would fill up the measure of our political well-being."

John Quincy Adams, while Secretary of State under Mr. Monroe, in a despatch to Mr. Nelson, our minister at Madrid, of the 28th April, 1823, says:—

"In the war between France and Spain, now commencing, other interests, peculiarly ours, will in all probability be deeply involved. Whatever may be the issue of this war as between those two European powers, it may be taken for granted that the dominion of Spain upon the American continents, north and south, is irrecoverably gone. But the islands of Cuba and Porto Rico still remain nominally and so far really dependent upon her, that she yet possesses the power of transferring her own dominion over them, together with the possession of them, to others. These islands, from their local position are natural appendages to the North American continent, and one of them (Cuba) almost in sight of our shores, from a multitude of considerations, has become an object of transcendent importance to the commercial and political interests of our Union. Its commanding position, with reference to the Gulf of Mexico and the West India seas, the character of its population, its situation midway between our southern coast and the island of St. Domingo, its safe and capacious harbor of the Havana, fronting a long line of our shores destitute of the same advantage, the nature of its productions and of its wants, furnishing the supplies and needing the returns of a commerce immensely profitable and mutually beneficial, give it an importance in the sum of our national interests with which that of no other foreign territory can be compared, and little inferior to that which binds the different members of this Union together. Such, indeed, are, between the interests of that island and of this country, the geographical, commercial, moral, and political relations formed by nature, gathering in the progress of time, and even now verging to maturity, that, in looking forward to the probable course of events, for the short period of half a century, it is scarcely possible to resist the conviction that the annexation of Cuba to our federal republic will be indispensable to the continuance and integrity of the Union itself. It is obvious, however, that for this event we are not yet prepared. Numerous and formidable objections to the extension of our territorial dominions beyond sea, present themselves to the first contemplation of the subject: obstacles to the system of policy by which alone that result can be compassed and maintained, are to be foreseen and surmounted, both from at home and abroad; but there are laws of political as well as of physical gravitation; and if an apple, severed by the tempest from its native tree, cannot choose but fall to the ground, Cuba, forcibly disjoined from its own unnatural connexion with Spain, and incapable of selfsupport, can gravitate only towards the North American Union, which, by the same law of nature, cannot cast her off from its bosom.

"The transfer of Cuba to Great Britain would be an event unpropitious to the interests of this Union. This opinion is so generally entertained, that even the groundless rumors that it was about to be accomplished, which have spread abroad, and are still teeming, may be traced to the deep and almost universal feeling of aversion to it, and to the alarm which the mere probability of its occurrence has stimulated. The question both of our right and of our power to prevent it, if necessary by force, already obtrudes itself upon our councils, and the administration is called upon, in the performance of its duties to the nation, at least to use all the means within its competency to guard against and forefend it."

On April 27, 1825, Mr. Clay, Secretary of State, in a dispatch to Mr. A. H. Everett, our minister at Madrid, instructing him to use his exertions to induce Spain to make peace with her revolted colonies, says:

change of that condition. The population itself of the islands is incompetent at present, from its composition and its amount, to maintain self-government. The maritime force of the neighboring republics of Mexico and Colombia is not now, nor is it likely shortly to be, adequate to the protection of those islands, if the conquest of them were effected. The United States would entertain constant apprehensions of their passing from their possession to that of some less friendly sovereignty; and of all the European powers, this country prefers that Cuba and Porto Rico should remain dependent on Spain. If the war should continue between Spain and the new republics, and those islands should become the object and the theatre of it, their fortunes have such a connexion with the prosperity of the United States, that they could not be indifferent spectators; and the possible contingencies of such a protracted war might bring upon the government of the United States duties and obligations, the performance of which, however painful it should be, they might not be at liberty to decline."

The "Ostend manifesto" of Ministers Buchanan, Soulè, and Mason, against which the opposition made so great an outcry during the late presidential campaign, contains no stranger language than is embraced in these despatches; and yet the views of Adams and Jefferson, on this subject, were sustained by the people of the country when in its infancy. The same determination not to allow Cuba to fall into other hands than those of Spain, or to secure it to the United States, has characterized every administration, with one or two exceptions, from the period of the annexation of Louisiana until the present time. In the commencement of their report, the Senate Committee say:"It is not considered necessary to enlarge upon the vast importance of the acquisition of the island of Cuba by the United States. To do so would be as much a work of supererogation as to demonstrate an elementary problem in mathematics, or one of those axioms of ethics or philosophy which have been universally received for ages. The ultimate acquisition of Cuba may be considered a fixed purpose of the United States-a purpose resulting from political and geographical necessities which have been recognised by all parties and all administrations, and in regard to which the popular voice has been expressed with a unanimity unsurpassed on any question of national policy that has heretofore engaged the public mind.

The purchase and annexation of Louisiana led, as a necessary corollary, to that of Florida, and both point with unerring certainty to the acquisition of Cuba. The sparse and feeble population of what is now the great West called in 1800 for the free navigation of the Mississippi, and the enforcement of the right of deposit at New Orleans. In three years not only were these privileges secured, but the whole of the magnificent domain of Louisiana was ours. Who now doubts the wisdom of a measure which at the time was denounced with a violence until then unparalleled in our political history?

From the day we acquired Louisiana, the attention of our ablest statesmen was fixed on Cuba. What the possession of the mouth of the Mississippi had been to the people of the West, that of Cuba became to the nation. To cast the eye upon the map was sufficient to predict its destiny. A brief reference will show the importance attached to the question by our leading statesmen, and the steadiness and perseverance with which they have endeavored to hasten the consummation of so vital a measure."

In 1848 an effort was made by President Polk to purchase Cuba, and Mr. Buchanan, then Secretary of State, authorized Mr. R. M. Saunders to propose the payment of one hundred millions of dollars, in case Spain should regard the proposition to purchase with favor.

The following statesman-like letter of Mr. Everett,* of Dec. 1, 1852, to the Compte de Sartiges, rejecting the joint proposition of the French and British governments for a tripartite convention with the United States, disclaiming severally and collectively all intention to obtain possession of the island of Cuba, and respectively binding themselves to discountenance all attempts to that effect on the part of any power or individuals whatever, we quote with pride, excepting, however, to the conclusions of the closing paragraph relating to the rapid improvement of Spain during the last twenty-five years: