Extracts.

New Zealander, Volume 3, Issue 186, 11 March 1848, Page 3

Extracts.

MEXICO. Origin of the War with Mexico: — It is deemed little less than high treason, in some quarters, wheie the man is lost in the partisan, and common tense has been eaten up by excess of zeal, to make any question as to the propriety of the President's course, in the beginning of the war with Mexico. On this subject Democracy reckons it a virtue to shut both eyei, and having thus blinded itself, it insists that others, also, shall refuse to see. There are somt who need no artificial appliances to make themselves nonsensical— having proclivitiei that W ay — there are others who seem to labor after stultification as though it were a desirable attainment. To these latter, reason brings too many responsibilities : it is a tioublesome gift. Proceeding upon the principle that ignorance is bliss, it is not their fault if they do not become superlatively happy. But upon this question of the origin of the Mexican war, the tranquilized nerves of the orthodox, lulled by opiates, are occasionally jarred by the spasmodic starts or refractory patients not yet soothed into quiescence. Mr. Brownbon, who gives a great deal of careful supervision to the party, without getting any thanks for his pains, and who, like a turbulent wasp in the hive, is continually annoying the whole tribe of drones and drilled operatives, thus speaks on the subject refe, red to:— The act of Mexico in crossing Rio Grande, and en. gaging our troops on territory which she had possessed and still claimed as her's, but which we asserted had by a recent act, ugainst which she had protested, become ours — the act which the Prehident chose to inform Congress and the world was war — may or may not have been a just cause for declaring war against her— but it assuredly was n. t war itself. We have no intention to justify Mexico. She may have been deciJed'y in the wrong— she may have had no valid title to the territory of which the President had just taken military occupation— that territory may have been i i,ht fully ours, and it may have been the duty of the Pre sident to occupy and defend it — but it cannot be denied that ihe had oni.e possessed it — that it was still a part of one of her states or provinces — that she still claimed it and had continued to exercise jurisdiction over it ; till driven from it by our army of- occupation, that she invaded it with an armed force, if invasion it can be called, not as territory belonging to us, but ns terri'ory belonging to her, and that she attacked our troops, not for the reason thac they were em's, but for the reason as she held— and she hasl as good a right to judge in her own case as we had in ours—t hat they were intruders, trespassers og her soil. The motive of her act was, not war upon the United States, but the expulsion of intruders from her own territory. No sophistry can make her act wai— certainly not without conceding that our act in taking military possession of that territory was war — and it that was war, then the war, if it existed all, existed by our act and net by hers, for her act was consequent upon oui's. — The most that the President was at liberty to say, without condemning hit own Government, was, thut there had been a collision of the forces of the two iepublics, on a territory claimed by each— but this collision he

lihil no right to term war, for everybody knows that it takes someth'ng more than a collision of their respective forces, on a. disputed territory, to constitute a war between two civilized nations. In no possiblt point of view was the announcement of tbe President that war existed between the two republics, and existed by the act of Mexico, correct. It did not exist at all, or if it did, it existed not by the act of Mexico, but by our act, and in either case the official announcment was false, and cannot be defended. The President may have been governed by patriotic motives, he may have felt that prompt and energetic action was required — he may have believed that in gi eat emergencies the Chief Magistrate ot a powerful republic, having to deal with a weak, distracted state, should rise superior to mere technical forms, and the niceiies of truth and honor, but it strikes that he would have done better, proved himielf more patriotic, and sufficiently nrompt and energetic, if he had confined himself to the ordinary rules of morality, and the welldefined principles of international law. By aspiring to rise above these, and to appear original, he has placed his country iv a false position, and dobarred himself, whatever the just causes of war Mexico may have gi*en, in from giving one of them in justification of the actual war. We must be permitted to regret that he did not reflect beforehand, that, if he placed the defence of the war on the ground that it already existed by the act of Mexico herself, and on that ground demanded of Congress the means of prosecuting it, he would, in case that ground proved untenable, as he must huve known it would, have nothing whatever to allege in its or his own justification. He would have been lawyer enough to know that he could not plead anew, having failed on his first issue. It is often hazardous in our pleadings to plead what is not true, and in doing so in the present case the President has not only offended morality, which he may regaid as a imall matter, but has even committed a blunder. The course the President should have pursued is plain and obrious. On learning the itate of things on the frontier, the critical condition of our ai my of occupation, he should have demanded of Congress the reinforcements and supplies necessary to relieve it, and secure the purpose for which it was avowedly sent to the Rio Grande, and if he believed it proper or necessary to have, in addition, laid beforo Congress, a full and truthful statement of our relations with Mexico, including all the unadjusted complainti, past and present, we had against her, accompanied by the recommendation of a declaration of war, he would then have kept within the limits ef his duty, proved himself a plain constitutional President, and left the responsibility of war, or no war, to Congress, the only warmaking power known to our laws. Congress, after mature deliberation, might or might not have declared war — most likely would not, but whether so or no, th« responsibility would have rested with it, and no blame would have attached to the President.~Baltimore American.