Mr. Romero to Mr. Seward
Mr. Secretary: Among the diplomatic correspondence which accompanies the message which the President addressed to the 37th Congress of the United States, dated December 1, 1862, and of which I seasonably transmitted a copy to the government of Mexico, there are documents relating to a subject which has attracted its attention in a very special manner, and respecting which I have received instructions to submit its views to the government of the United States.
The Mexican government, which has always considered as an indispensable condition for the perservation of the independence and autonomy of the American nations the keeping out of them the intervention of the European powers in [Page 1247] their domestic affairs, and which, in order to maintain this sacred principle intact to-day, finds itself involved in a most gigantic war with one of the most powerful and most warlike nations of Europe, cannot see with indifference the events occuring in other portions of the American continent, and from which there may result, sooner or later, an European intervention in these countries.
The fate of the nations of America are bound together in such a manner that if the encroachments of the despots of Europe should succeed in one of them, it would scarcely be possible to prevent their being extended to all of them. Upon this subject the opinion of the government of Mexico is in full accord with the traditional policy of the United States.
In the opinion of the government of Mexico, the result could have been none other than that of an European intervention, if the proposal which the United States made in June last to the cabinets of St. James and the Tuilleries, to send land forces to the isthmus of Panama, with a view of protecting the neutrality of the isthmus, had been accepted by the governments of Great Britain and France.
Events have come to demonstrate, in a manner which does not admit of reply, that neither the tranquillity of that region was changed, nor its transit interrupted, because of its occupation by the forces of General Mosquera, who, at that time, was already in possession of Bogota, the capital of New Granada, and who had overthrown the constitutional government of that confederation.
The petition (request,) therefore, on the part of the late representative of the Granadian confederation, that the United States should send forces which should reoccupy for his party the possession of the isthmus, under the plea that if it fell under, or remained in, the power of General Mosquera, the security of the isthmus would not be sufficiently protected, had, it seemed, no other object than to cause the plague of a foreign intervention to recoil upon his own country, in order that, through its aid, the party which had been overthrown might thus re-establish itself into power.
The pretexts which the Mexican emigrants residing in Europe adduced to the courts of Paris and Madrid were no less inadequate to bring about a similar result in Mexico, and which deternined three of the nations of that continent to sign the treaty of London of the 31st of October, 1861, which unchained against Mexico the present war with France, and the calamities resulting therefrom.
The government of Mexico has, for this same reason, seen the last resolution of the President of the United States upon this subject, which you communicated to Mr. Dayton, in the despatch No. 215, of September 15, 1862, (page 381 of said correspondence,) in which the danger of an European intervention in New Granada is made to disappear, with a satisfaction as great and as sincere as its alarm would have been intense and profound, in the event of a contrary determination.
I avail myself of this opportunity to renew to you, sir, the assurances of my most distinguished consideration.
Hon. William H. Seward, &c., &c., &c.