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312 ; that in order to arrive at a decision on the claims preferred, documents had to be gathered from various parts of the country, and that the requisite instructions had been already issued to procure such documents, upon the receipt of which the government's decision on the several points would be made known to the American legation.

This was exactly what neither the minister nor the state department at Washington wanted. Having assumed an arbitrary and insulting attitude in the matter, these officials were determined that the issue should be so forced upon Mexico that there should be no escape. The United States was the stronger power, and there were many among her fire-eaters in those days who delighted in playing the cowardly part of bully. On the 4th of November Ellis gave formal notice that unless his complaints were satisfactorily answered in two weeks he would go. Mexico felt her feebleness and the humiliation. Within the prescribed time her minister of foreign affairs, Monasterio, replied that under the existing treaty the citizens of either country could bring their grievances before the courts of the other, and hence there was no need of government interference to procure that justice which the courts were ready to afford."

"You say that Mexican armed vessels have fired upon and insulted the American flag," continues Monasterio in his note of the 26th of September, "that American consuls have been maltreated, private citizens arrested and scourged like malefactors, some have been assassinated, and their property confiscated. But these charges are general, and the government

7 Monasterio's words were fully borne out by the 14th article of the treaty. Forsyth himself had made avail of that article, in his reply of Jan. 29, 1836, to a demand of the Mexican govt for the punishment of the com. officer of an American war ship for an outrage committed by him on a Mexican vessel. His words were: The courts of the U. S. are freely open to all persons in their jurisdiction, who may consider themselves to have been aggrieved in contravention of our laws and treaties.' U. S. Govt Doc., Cong. 24, Ses. 2, H. Ex. 139, vol. iii. But it was quite a different affair, my bull and your ox or your bull and my ox. Ellis on the 15th of Nov. coolly declared Monasterio's opinion 'wholly indefensible.'