THE UNITED STATES AND MEXICO. (From the Times, April 26.)

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume III, Issue 225, 25 September 1847, Page 3

THE UNITED STATES AND MEXICO . (From the Times, April 26.)

We published in our last impression some intelligence which has been rather anxiously t looked for. The American mails arrived on Friday with authentic particulars of the late occurrences at the scene of war. Amongst them will bs found the official despatches of General Taylor, relative to the battle of Saltillo, the ciicumstances of which are narrated with soj3e little variation from the previous reports, but with a result substantially the same. The " three battles " spoken of in the American papers are resolved into a pretty continuous engagement of neariy a day and a half, conducted with great obstinacy on both sides. Taylor was at Aqua Nueva on the 21st February, when he received information of Santa Anna's intended attack. Not thinking it prudent to receive the assault in this position, he retired upon Buena Vista, seven miles south of Saltillo, where he took up a strong line. He was here summoned to an unconditional surrender by Santa Anna, who had driven in the covering force left at Aqua Nueva, and appeared on the 22nd, immediately in the American front, with his whole army. The summons being of course declined, the attack commenced, and was continued with great vigour throughout the afternoon of the 22nd and the whole day of the ■23rd. At its conclusion Santa Anna must have sent off his despatch of this date from Buena Vista, detailing the events of the day, and announcing his .intended retreat upon Aqua Nueva, which he effected early that .night. According to the American account, Taylor would seem to have sustained all the attacks of the Mexicans in his position at Buena Vista, whereas Santa Anna's despatch, as well as the report previously in circulation, represented the Americans as falling back, though without disorder, from one post to another. Taylor certainly decamped from Aqua Nueva at the first intelligence of Santa Anna's approach, and bis cursory intimation that a "demonstration on Saltillo was "handsomely repelled," shows that detachments, at least, of the two armies must have been engaged at some point beyond Buena Vista. Probably Santa Anna makes too much and Taylor too little of these movements. Our suspicions that the American General had not actually reached Monterey as reported, turn out to be correct. By the dates of his despatches, he appears to have been at Buena Vista on the 24th — the day after the battle — at Saltillo on the 25th, and at Aqua Nueva .on the Ist of March. It is not improbable, we think, that he was in or near Saltillo on the 23rd, when Santa Anna was at Buena Vista, and that he successfully occupied this

position and that at Aqua Nueva as the Mexican General quitted them. His onslaught upon the retiring enemy proves to be mere romance. Two days after fighting, Santa Anna was still at Aqua Nueva, the post from which the Americans had originally decamped, and Taylor's despatch merely expresses a 11 preparation to receive him, should he venture another attack " — words which certainly imply no great superiority of condition. Indeed, beyond the fact that the Americans undoubtedly beat off, though from a strong position, a force nearly quadrupling their own, they seem to have no great grounds for triumph. Santa Anna's movements have been very leisurely, and there is no reason to think them otherwise than voluntary. The debateable ground was between Saltillo and Aqua Nueva. From the latter place Santa Anna is said to be moving on his original line of operations towards San Luis, and from the former place Taylor himself announces his resolution of retiring to his head-quarters at Monterey. The disorganization which the American General attributes to the enemy's forces, and the composure which he ascribes to his own, mnst of course be understood with considerable allowances. The operations in the Gulf are more intelligible, as they have not yet proceeded beyond the preliminaries of taking up positions. The Lobos Armada sailed on the 9th of March, and landed 12,000 men, without opposition, three miles from Vera Cruz. The following days were occupied iv investing the city completely by land, while the squadron blockaded all the sea approaches to the castle and port.- This unresisted investment of the place probably gave rise to the report men- 1 tioned in our last advices, that the town and castle had already fallen to the Americans. We have already quoted authorities in confirmation of our own surmises that the capture of Vera Cruz will do little more than the capture of Tampico towards concluding, or even advancing the war, unless the effects of the Three Million Bill should begin to be simultaneously felt. It is at this point, however, that the real push is made. The movement in the north was purely Mexican, nor will the American force in that quarter have further orders probably than to maintain such a hold on California, and the line of the Grande, as will both suggest and facilitate the peaceable transfer of these coveted districts at the consummation of a peace. The American papers contain a loug communication between the President and the Secretary of the Treasury, dated 23rd of last month, from which it clearly appears that the scheme broached some time ago of occupying all the Mexican seaboard and blockading an entire empire into a capitulation, is to be seriously prosecuted, and that the investment of Vera Cmz is one step in the plan. The ports both in the Atlantic and the Pacific are to be seized, and the communication across the isthmus is to be secured. Mexican duties and prohi* bitions are to .be everywhere abolished, and such a tariff devised as will best answer the ends of raising the revenue and increasing commerce. By these means it is conceived that the United States treasury will be eased of some of the burden of the war ; that the duties collected by American officers will go far to support the troops engaged in the contest ; that the goodwill of neutral nations will be secured by an arrangement so much more favourable to all their interests than the absurd restrictions of the old Mexican tariff; and that the Mexicans themselves will be at length circumvented into an honourable peace. We will not, at present, remark upon the long vista of blockades and sieges which this prospect discloses, or on the probable duration of a war which is to witness the capture of all the ports of an extensile country, and which, at the commencement of its second year, has only yet seen the occupation of one and the investment of another of them. Neither will we attempt to calculate how far the opinions of neutral nations upon the whole casus belli may be qualified by the bonus held out to them in the proposed arrangements for the campaign. We will only say, that even if all the three first expectations should be verified, but little advance will be made towards securthe fulfilment of the last. It is perfectly notorious to the Americans themselves that the Mexican nation can subsist in abundant comfort upon its own / lateaux and leave the invaders to enjoy the sea-coast as long as they please. If they choose to indulge their obstinacy, there is nothing in this blockade to prevent them. They know perfectly well that the Americans can never find men, money, or patience, for the permanent occupation of any points they may seize, otherwise they would never display so much anxiety about the peaceable conveyance of the property. The appropriation of the Mexican customs may assist, but it can never reimburse, the American exchequer. There will still be a growing balance against the Treasury, and a growing feeling against the war. Its novelty has already worn off; its injustice is daily more notorious ; its expenses are hourly more

serious, and its termination more invisible than ever. The States want part of California and the line of the Grande. They have already taken them ; and if they know the way to keep them, the business would be done. But their tenure is not worth a dollar without such consent of the Mexicans as will preclude the necessity and the cost of armed occupation. This consent they are now labouring to extort ; but as they, even by their most promising schene, have to conquer and occupy every port on either coast, while the Mexicans have nothing to do but to sit still and be sulky, it is not difficult to discover which party has the harder game.