and everything but territorial indemnity may be considered the
no-purposes and indefinite objects of the war! But, having it now settled
that territorial indemnity is the only object, we are urged to seize, by
legislation here, all that he was content to take a few months ago, and
the whole province of Lower California to boot, and to still carry on the
war to take all we are fighting for, and still fight on. Again, the
President is resolved under all circumstances to have full territorial
indemnity for the expenses of the war; but he forgets to tell us how we
are to get the excess after those expenses shall have surpassed the value
of the whole of the Mexican territory. So again, he insists that the
separate national existence of Mexico shall be maintained; but he does
not tell us how this can be done, after we shall have taken all her
territory. Lest the questions I have suggested be considered speculative
merely, let me be indulged a moment in trying to show they are not. The
war has gone on some twenty months; for the expenses of which, together
with an inconsiderable old score, the President now claims about one half
of the Mexican territory, and that by far the better half, so far as
concerns our ability to make anything out of it. It is comparatively
uninhabited; so that we could establish land-offices in it, and raise
some money in that way. But the other half is already inhabited, as I
understand it, tolerably densely for the nature of the country, and all
its lands, or all that are valuable, already appropriated as private
property. How then are we to make anything out of these lands with this
encumbrance on them? or how remove the encumbrance? I suppose no one
would say we should kill the people, or drive them out, or make slaves of
them, or confiscate their property. How, then, can we make much out of
this part of the territory? If the prosecution of the war has in expenses
already equalled the better half of the country, how long its future
prosecution will be in equalling the less valuable half is not a
speculative, but a practical, question, pressing closely upon us. And yet