Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Politics volume 4 .djvu/74

62 dreads the fire, no future President, or Congress, or Convention, or Party, would talk much in favour of war for some years to come. The moral effect of this war is thoroughly bad. It was unjust in the beginning. Mexico did not pay her debts ; but though the United States, in 1783, acknowledged the British claims against ourselves, they were not paid till 1803; our claims against England, for her depredations in 1793, were not paid till 1804; our claims against France, for her depredations in 1806-13, were not paid us till 1834. The fact that Mexico refused to receive the resident Minister which the United States sent to settle the disputes, when a commissioner was expected—this was no ground of war. We have lately seen a British ambassador ordered to leave Spain within eight-and-forty hours, and yet the English Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lord Palmerston—no new hand at diplomacy—declares that this does not interrupt the concord of the two nations ! We treated Mexico contemptuously before hostilities began ; and when she sent troops into a territory which she had always possessed, though Texas had claimed it, we declared that that was an act of war, and ourselves sent an army to invade her soil, to capture her cities, and seize her territory. It has been a war of plunder, undertaken for the purpose of seizing Mexican territory, and extending over it that dismal curse which blackens, impoverishes, and barbarizes half the Union now, and swiftly corrupts the other half. It was not enough to have Louisiana a slave territory; not enough to make that institution perpetual in Florida; not enough to extend this blight over Texas—we must have yet more slave soil, one day to be carved into Slave States, to bind the Southern yoke yet more securely on the Northern neck; to corrupt yet more the politics, literature, and morals of the North. The war was unjust at its beginning; mean in its motives, a war without honourable cause; a war for plunder; a quarrel between a great boy and a little puny weakling who could not walk alone, and could hardly stand. We have treated Mexico as the three Northern powers treated Poland in the last century—stooped to conquer. Nay, our contest has been like the English seizure of Ireland. All the justice was on one side, the force, skill, and wealth, on the other.