Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 2).djvu/300

290 necessarily must come if such a country and such a people as Mexico and the Mexicans were incorporated with the political system of the United States, and admonished his countrymen to beware of trifling with the national honor. “I am afraid,” he said, “that we do not now stand well in the opinion of other parts of Christendom. Repudiation has brought upon us much reproach. All the nations, I apprehend, look upon us, in the prosecution of the present war, as being actuated by a spirit of rapacity, and an inordinate desire for territorial aggrandizement.”

He summed up his argument in a series of resolutions. They set forth that the war had been brought on by an unrighteous policy, but that, “Congress having, by subsequent acts, recognized the war thus brought into existence, the prosecution of it thereby became national;” that it was the right of Congress to declare, by some authoritative act, for what purposes and objects the existing war ought to be further prosecuted; that it was the duty of the President to conform to such a declaration of Congress; that the purpose of annexing Mexico to the United States in any mode, and especially by conquest, could not be contemplated without the most serious alarm; that a union of Mexico with the United States should be deprecated, because it could not be effected and carried on in peace, but would lead to despotic sway in the one and then in both countries; that there should be a generous peace, requiring no