Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/482

 of enterprising industry; and the occurrence would not only command the approval, but also the admiration, of Great Britain and other European States. The London Times, which moulds rather than follows public opinion, says: "There is not a statesman who would wish to see Great Britain hamper herself with an inch of Mexican ground. Let the United States, when they are finally prepared for it, enjoy all the advantages and responsibility of ownership, and our merchants at Liverpool and elsewhere will be quite content with the trade that may spring out of it. The capacity of the Mexican population for appreciating a constitutional rule is not so remarkable that we should volunteer to administer it." The Monroe doctrine has been repeatedly ridiculed of recent years, and by grave Senators, as the merest of abstractions—as unmeaning and valueless. But let me tell you, sir, that but for that doctrine Texas probably had never entered your confederacy. Canning might have yielded to Polignac for the consolidation of a monarchical or aristocratical form of government for the ci-devant colonies of Spain, by which, of course, she would have been included as one of those colonies, had it not been for the seasonable declaration of that doctrine, and the thrill of joyous delight with which it was hailed by the votaries of liberty everywhere. On this account alone I may be pardoned for fancying that it is deserving of a worthier designation, even by the most violent tongue, than an abstraction. When Cortez returned lo Madrid from his conquering expedition to America, he went to Court. The haughty Charles V., observing his stately mien as he approached him, emphatically demanded: "Who are you, sir?" "The man," replied he, "who has given you more provinces than your ancestors left you cities! " With equal truth may it be said of Texas that she has been instrumental in giving the Union more dollars that its founders left it cents. She has been instrumental in developing its resources more in twelve years than had been previously developed in sixty. I do not mention this in a spirit of vainglory. Who could be vainglorious of such a State?— a State that is advancing with giant's strides in all that constitutes a State to the head of the column of the Southern division of the Union? The time may come—yes, will come, sir—when if she shall be as properly cared for by this Government in her intercourse with Mexico as New York has been cared for in her intercourse with the British Provinces, she may be to that division what the Empire State is to the Northern division. But whatever her future power, I trust that the language of her sons will ever be, in contradistinction to the supercilious expressions which fell from the lips of a distinguished Senator a few days ago, as far as concerns the exercise of might for the purpose of sectional oppression:

Whenever one section of this country presumes upon its strength for the oppression of the other, then will our Constitution be a mockery, and it would matter not how soon it was severed into a thousand atoms and scattered to the four winds. If the principles are disregarded upon which the annexation of Texas was consummated, there will be for her neither honor nor interest in the Union; if the mighty, in the face of written law, can place with impunity an iron yoke upon the neck of the weak, Texas will be at no loss how to act, or