Page:Vol 5 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/268

248 paid in April 1843, and the principal with later interest in the course of five years. The first payments were made, although forced loans had to be levied for the purpose under the most grievous circumstances. One reason for this promptness was apprehensions roused by the agitation at different places in the northern republic in favor of Texas, with actual [sic]enrolment of men for aiding her. When the Mexican minister remonstrated, the government at Washington professed to be ignorant of any such movement, although belied at the very moment by an aggressive act on the part of its Pacific squadron, which, in October 1842, took possession of Monterey in California. Ample apology was tendered, but the fact remained patent that at Washington affairs had matured to the very point of war, in apparent sympathy with the popular feeling. To this, moreover, was directly due the justifiably strong language from Mexico which was claimed to have roused the United States. Then, in the spring of 1843, came another invasion of New Mexico from, Texas, although prepared mainly in the provinces to the north. The States now pleaded inability to restrain such attempts, but it was evident that sufficient efforts had not been exerted to check them. It cannot be denied that the Texan question, a turning-point for strife, was an outgrowth of Mexico's past errors, and that the sympathy of the Anglo-Americans was natural; but this by no means justified its different manifestations, which could not fail to provoke the somewhat over-sensitive national honor of the Mexicans. Their relations