Page:The Fall of Maximilan's Empire.djvu/11

Rh the advance of the French on Puebla. Every step was closely watched by the far-seeing members of Mr. Lincoln's Cabinet, and the skillful diplomacy evoked was a faithful expression of the people's instinctive distrust of foreign complications and interventions, coupled with an hereditary, pronounced desire that the affairs of the western continent should be settled by the western continent. The tenor of Emperor Napoleon's confidential letter of instructions to General Forey did not become generally known until long after. Some significant passages in it would have perhaps opened wide the eyes of popular jealousy in the United States, and given a more determined coloring to what was dimly suspected. Among the paragraphs may be quoted the following:

"There will not be wanting some who will ask you why we have provided men and money to establish a regular government in Mexico. In the present state of civilization of the world the prosperity of America is not indifferent to Europe, for she it is who feeds our manufactures and keeps our commerce alive. It is to our interest that the Republic of the United States may be powerful and prosperous, but by no means that she should take all the Gulf of Mexico and hence command the West Indies as well as South America, and be the sole dispenser of the products of the New World. . . . Now, therefore, our military honor