Page:Mexico and its reconstruction.djvu/268

250 cases have become so much a matter of history that effective correction is, as a rule, beyond the powers of the government, whatever its good intent may be. In the great majority of cases, too, the record of the foreign interest is one that shows property rights acquired under the conditions laid down by Mexican law and involving privileges, if at all special, only of a kind that the granting government was not only willing, but anxious, to give. An attack upon property rights of this nature by Mexico can not leave the foreign powers, whose citizens' rights are involved, without concern.

At best foreigners have endured heavy losses during the revolution. No country can suffer from a far-reaching revolutionary activity for a decade without great damage to property rights of all sorts. The government that finally establishes itself assumes, as a matter of course, the duty to pay all proper claims arising out of the hostilities. It is not only this responsibility which is under discussion in connection with the property rights of foreigners in Mexico but the obligation on the part of the republic to adopt toward undestroyed foreign property rights a policy that shall not amount to confiscation, and that shall not be directed against foreign capital merely because it is foreign, irrespective of the conditions under which the interests in question may have joined their lot to that of the republic.

It is the declarations of Mexican leaders and the legislation adopted that seems to offend in this particular that have caused the greatest doubt in the mind of foreigners and their governments as to whether they can count upon justice and the maintenance of standards of