Page:Mexico as it was and as it is.djvu/448

 Rh immediate neighbor in the hour of her weakness, and to protect the Islands that have been founded and raised to national dignity and importance, by American zeal and American enterprise. It is our pecuniary and our political interest to do so.

No one who has been in the least attentive to the diplomatic negotiations of our country, can fail to know, that the question of total political separation between this Continent and Europe, is one of no recent date.

When the revolutions of the Southern Republics were in some degree quieted, and it became evident after the battle of Ayacucho, that the dominion of Spain must cease entirely over her American colonies, the Government of the United States hastened to interfere, by her ministers abroad in behalf of the independence of the revolted provinces. It did so, in order to prevent the useless effusion of blood, and to produce a pacification of this hemisphere, under which the commercial interests our Union might be fostered, and the people of the newly emancipated regions take their place among the enlightened nations of the world. In these negotiations with the European powers, both Mr. Adams and Mr. Clay produced some of the ablest state papers that adorn the archives of our Department; and it would be well to refer to them at the present period, when the encroachments of England, on the flimsiest pretexts, are again beginning to be visible all over the world, while she is extending her sway, not only for the peaceful purpose of her commerce, but for empire and territory. The foundation of the exclusive system of our country, has been laid "in principles of morals and politics new and distasteful to the thrones and dominations of the Old World;" and they are now, most probably, seeking with slow and secret advance, to regain by gradual and unheeded progress, what the political ferments of Europe, at an earlier period, forced them to abandon.

In the summer of 1825, a large French fleet visited the American seas and the coast of the United States. The purpose of this armament was unknown. But the watchful statesmen of those days regarded a visit of that character with jealous eyes; and the Minister of the United States at the Court of Paris was immediately directed by Mr. Clay, to inform the Cabinet to which he was accredited, that any such movements, made in lime of peace, ought hereafter to be notified to us. Mr. Brown was instructed, at the same time, to call the attention of the French Government to the condition of the islands of Cuba and Porto Rico; and li was distinctly intimated, that inasmuch as we were altogether contented with the present ownership of these possessions, "we could not consent to their occupation by another European power than Spain, under any contingency whatever." A similar communication was made about the same lime to Mr. Canning; and it is known that these frank and amicable representations were heedfully respected by the Government? both of England and France. The real purposes of the French fleet of 1825 are still utterly unknown; but the idea that its object was the occupation of Cuba and Porto Rico gained considerable ground, from the current rumor of the day the weakness of Spain the revolted condition of her provinces the intimate alliance between that monarchy and France, and "the disproportionate extent of the armament to any ordinary purposes of peaceful commerce."