Page:Juarez and Cesar Cantú (1885).djvu/14

 It is thus seen that at all times even to the present, the political enemies of Mexico, that is to say, the partisans of the Church and of the Empire, have sought to stain the historic reputation of our great citizen, by attributing to him the intention, and even more, the attempt to sell the national territory to the United-States.

The Diario Oficial of the Empire of June 26th, 1865, constituting itself, in bad faith, the echo of the statements published by a foreign newspaper, said, when speaking of Maximilian: "his own predecessor (Juarez) offered the "very same territory (Sonora) to President Lincoln for "three millions of pounds sterling."

But it is not strange that foreign speculators and wandering adventurers should accept the calumny when there were Mexicans who, perhaps without conviction, undertook to propagate it.

One of them was the lawyer Don José Maria Aguirre, who in 1861 was enrolled with the fifty one members of Congres who endeavoured to declare the election of President Juarez null and void. Mr. Aguirre formulated the same charge against Juarez; a charge which was rejected as unfounded by the same members of the opposition belonging to the fraction of the fifty one. That distinguished journalist, Francisco Zarco, chief editor of the Siglo XIX, published, in connection with this matter, the remarkable article which we now reproduce, and to which Mr. Zamacona refers in his article of the Diario Oficial already cited. That article confirms these two important truths: the refusal of Juarez to solicit foreign aid, even against the opinion of his own friends and political