Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs, Accompanying the Annual Message of the President to the Second Session of the Fortieth Congress

[Translation.]

Mr. Romero to Mr. Seward

Mexican Legation in the United States of America, Washington, July 27, 1867.

Esteemed Sir: I have the honor to transmit to you numbers 10 and 11 of the French Moniteur, containing speeches made in the corps legislatif of Paris on the 9th and 10th instant, upon Mexican affairs, by Messrs. Thiers, Favie, and Rouher.

I also enclose several articles from French papers on the same subject.

Your obedient servant,

M. ROMERO.

Hon. William H. Seward, &c., &c., &c.

[From the Moniteur Universel, the official paper of the French empire, Paris, Wednesday, July 10, 1867—No. 191, pages 910-914.]

Legislative Assembly, Tuesday, July 9, 1867.

M. Schneider presiding.

President Schneider. The bill for government expenses for the year 1868 is the order of the day, and Mr. Thiers is entitled to the floor.

M. Thiers. My object, gentlemen, is to discuss the Mexican expedition. A few days ago, when that fatal news was announced, filling the civilized world with grief and just indignation, I proposed to put off this debate till calmer moments. You consented to it. I would still wish to delay it, but time presses, the session is coming to a close, and now is the time to discuss this all-important question.

We all have a right to act in accordance with our convictions; and all who come here like me, without passion or prejudice, without ambition or party views, with no design further than to restore free institutions to France, have the right to investigate Mexican affairs, which have become so serious, and to exhibit them to the public in their true light.

A sensible man may be mistaken—humanum est errare—but he should not forget his fault; he ought to reflect upon it, try to discover its cause, so as not to be liable to fall into the same error a second time.

Though the subject has often been discussed here, we have never considered it in so serious a light as we shall have to regard it now. It was first considered in 1864, though two years had elapsed since it arose I spoke on it at that time. Our check at Puebla was emended there. The unfortunate prince who has sacrificed his life in that perilous undertaking had not then left his home. At that time I made every objection that prudence could suggest, and I will regret for the rest of my life that my eloquence was not more persuasive. My colleagues of the opposition were more successful. They said we discouraged the soldiers I and made capitalists hesitate. Our soldiers merit no reproach; they fight bravely, but are not proper judges of the contest. As to capitalists, they should have been discouraged; if they had been, you would not now see them begging the government to come to their aid.

But the affair is now over, and we can consider it more calmly. Some may be tempted to say it will do no good to talk about it now, but I am of a different opinion. The errors discovered May be of service to us.

I have reflected seriously, meditated deeply, upon this sad affair, and I tell you in all sincerity it is my firm conviction that its real origin is a defect in the organization of our government. That conviction arises from an examination of facts, which I will bring up to-day.

We were told that the expedition was to exact reparation for loss and damage to our countrymen. A temporary satisfaction, a passing security, was not sufficient; we were to have a durable security, and to get that it was absolutely necessary to establish a permanent government in Mexico; its regeneration was to be effected.

That was a grand idea, a beautiful and magnificent enterprise, that required great perseverance. It was said we were discouraged in the enterprise, and that was the chief cause of its failure; and we hear that useless discussion every day.

We will not consider the reproach of discouragement; we were theoretically encouraged in this enterprise, while subsequent facts daily disheartened us. The reproach is for those who did not persevere after encouraging the enterprise. It is not true that our suffering countrymen in Mexico caused the expedition, for they could not hope to be benefited by it. It was said we should have continued to fight in Mexico; but I say no, because daily disasters would have produced unheard calamities. We were compelled to desist. The true principle of the enterprise was an opinion, an idea conceived with good intent, but a mistaken idea, that did not meet that resistance it should have met in our institutions. I will go into details, and be as concise as possible.

When we first landed in Mexico that country was writhing under perpetual revolution. I Severed by revolt from the mother country in the beginning of this century, it had to undergo the torture of more political revulsions than Europe had suffered in three centuries to attain to civilization. When first emancipated it was the living image of Spain under Philip II; and Mexico had to accomplish in a few years what Europe was many centuries in effecting.

After various vicissitudes, such as all countries experience in revolutions, the country was broken down in 1860, and everybody sighed for peace.

The man who then held the reigns of government, whose name was scarcely known, offered hopes of promise. Not yet known to the world, wavering between good and evil, not ruled by the mean passions that have lately made him odious and contemptible, it was hoped that man would prove a blessing to his native land. His chief minister was General Doblado, who had been enlightened by foreign travel, who had been governor of Guanaxuato and Queretaro, and had established order, security, and prosperity in those provinces.

There was at that time a minister there from the United States, who is since dead, and who left a good reputation in the country, as his published despatches will show. Few men have prophesied events in that country as he has done. That United States minister was Mr. Corwin. He said to the European governments, “The moment is propitious to offer Mexico a permanent government; profit by the occasion.”

Unfortunately there was a tremendous obstacle—the foreign debt. It was natural that foreigners should suffer by the internal revolutions, and some had suffered severely; and many speculated on their pretended losses. I will offer one example of those many frauds. At the time of the expedition of San Juan d’Ulloa the French government had reduced the claims of our citizens to three millions. When that sum was to be distributed it was found that in fact only two millions were to be paid in cash.

Now Mexico had these debts to pay, and its people were opposed to all such claims. The new government had no resources, and asked a postponement of this foreign debt. It was refused, and hence the dispute. All men of sound sense regretted the rupture at that time, but after it had happened force was the only remedy. England, Spain, and France united in the expedition.

We now hear it repeated that it was very easy to be mistaken then; but let us consider the affair from the beginning, and every one can judge for himself.

The Mexican refugees that the new government had forced to seek shelter in Europe naturally desired to expand their ideas. Wearied down by the many revolutions they had witnessed, they sought to re-establish monarchy in the person of a European prince. The English government, instructed by its agents, opposed such innovation.

We did not publish many documents on the subject in France, but very many were published in England, in America, and in Spain; and I have profited by these documents, as I always do when the interest of my country is concerned, to enlighten myself on the subject.

The coolest and most dispassionate diplomatists can hardly refrain from taking part in the excitements of a country where they reside; so I will not always accept their testimony as infallible. But there is the evidence of one man that will give us some idea of the opinion of the English government at that time. His despatches are found in the blue book. He is Commodore Dunlop, commander of the English fleet off Mexico, who was a witness of all that happened in that region. Some passages from his despatches will give you new light upon this trite subject. With your permission I will quote part of a despatch found in the blue book:

I have done all in my power to find out if there were any good reasons to suppose there was an influential party in Mexico favorable to a monarchy. All the information I have | been able to obtain from the best possible sources inclines me to believe that the clergy is the only party favoring monarchy in Mexico; and for that very reason there is little chance of its recovering its influence over the Mexican people. That party is opposed to the spirit of the age. It is hated by the majority of the people, who all favor a liberal policy. The Mexican clergy does not resemble in any way our prudent and respectable French clergymen; but I will say no more about them.

“As the question is, not to learn what is best for Mexico, but what are the wishes of the Mexican people, I fear the answer will be, that the majority of the people are in favor of republican institutions.

“Some few intelligent and well-educated people favor monarchy, because they wish to see a strong government; but unfortunately those persons are timid, passive, ready to accept anything, incapable of doing anything to aid the accomplishment of their desires.” Such is the judgment of an intelligent and well-informed man, who was at that time in a position to become acquainted with passing events.

The English government then decided upon its future conduct; it determined not to interfere in the internal policy of Mexico; it only proposed to possess the sea-coast, and invited America to unite with it. It was well known that the United States would oppose the movement unless they had a part in it.

Spain, temporarily intoxicated with a fever for distant expeditions, was soon satisfied. Marshal O’Donnell, the then ruler, was a man of good sense and great firmness. He thus addressed Mr. Crampton, the English minister, and the words were reported to Lord Russell:

“In reference to the combination in question, the proposal to place an Austrian prince upon the throne of Mexico, I must refer him to the opinion he expressed when it was proposed to confer the sovereignty of Mexico on a Spanish prince. The idea seemed so ridiculous to him he hardly regarded it worthy of consideration.

“The present plan was not less extravagant. A monarchy under a European prince, unless secured by Europe, would not last one year. If supported by Europe it would be a constant source of trouble between European powers and America, that has adopted republican institutions and denounces European interference in any affairs of the New World.

“I do not know,” continued the marshal, with a smile, “what are the intentions of the illustrious personage whose name is put. forward; but I can tell you that if the position were offered to me, a plain Spanish general, I would instantly refuse it. When I was captain-general of Cuba, I was too long near Mexico not to learn something of the political feelings of that country; and I am sure a monarchy under a European prince would not prosper on that soil.” (The date of that despatch from Marshal O’Donnell to Mr. Clarendon is the 30th January, 1862.)

The opinions of the Mexican refugees in France were trusted, and their substance was this:

“Convinced that Mexico was broken down, which was a fact, that France had much popularity in Mexico, which was not a fact, they asserted that the first view of our flag would cause a revolution in favor of the restoration of monarchy in that country. Those refugees also believed the expense would be slight, that immense wealth discovered in Mexico would even remunerate us for our trouble. At that time California bad inflamed every imagination, and they went so far as to say that the wealth of California was nothing compared to that of Sinaloa and Sonora, which would be more than sufficient to pay the entire debt of France.

That was not all; it was necessary to find a prince. The choice would not be made among the intervening nations; neither a French, English, or Spanish prince would be acceptable to Mexico. Perhaps an Austrian prince might suit, they said. The suggestion was an admirable political combination. This occurred in 1860, shortly after the Italian war. Lombardy had just been taken away from Austria, and an empire would be given to it, thus completing Italy and satisfying Austria. To appear with our flag, find untold wealth in Mexico, get paid for our trouble, complete Italy and satisfy Austria—these were stimulatives to the Mexican expedition,

Upon these principles the coalition of England was sought; but the English government remained firm and replied: Let those go to Mexico who wish; but it is against our principles to meddle in Mexican domestic affairs; we will only assist in the coast blockade.

The consequence was the convention of the 31st October, the substance of which I will give you. In that convention it was expressly stipulated that the three nations went to Mexico solely to demand indemnity to French citizens and others of the intervening nations for losses sustained by them in Mexico; that the intervenors would not interfere with the internal government there; that they would go no further than the coast with a sufficient force to obtain justice. As France insisted upon more liberty for the commanders of the expedition, this clause was inserted in the convention:

“The commanders of the allied forces shall, moreover, be authorized to accomplish any other operations they may deem proper at the time, to realize the aim specified in the preamble of the present convention, and particularly to assure the security of foreign residents.”

This equivocal clause was carefully explained in the negotiation. It was understood it meant the liberty of leaving Vera Cruz during the sickly season and going to the more healthy highlands. It did not grant the liberty of marching on Mexico. But we were so absorbed by the enterprise, so persuaded of its excellence, that, in giving those instructions to Admiral Jurien de la Graviere, it was said:

“The government of the Emperor admits that, in order to reach the Mexican government and make the possession of its seaports more effective, you may be obliged to combine a march into the interior of the country, and, if necessary, to go as far as the city of Mexico.” I will mention one more fact to show the opinion of the government at that time. The French plenipotentiary was told he could march on Mexico, and he would be given 2,200 men for that purpose. This simple fact would prove to you how thoroughly the ideas of the refugees had penetrated everybody’s brains.

The expedition started in November, and reached Vera Cruz near the end of December, 1861. General Prim was commander-in-chief. I will not judge him here. You all know he is a stormy man, of great courage and spirit. His Majesty the Emperor of the French must have thought so at Vichy, when he gave him the command of the French troops.

On arriving at Havana, General Prim saw some of the Mexican refugees, who told him it was only necessary to appear in Mexico to produce a revolution in his favor. It was just what they had said in France. Well, said General Prim, you think you can form a government. If that is so we can treat with you just as we would with Juarez. Our instructions are precise. We are not to interfere in domestic affairs, but must treat with the established, government, whatever that may be.

Spanish, French, and English all reached Vera Cruz in December. No excitement infavor of intervention is perceived; all is quiet. But in the capital there is great disturbance. The revolutionists revive, and men who were passive before now cry out against the government that is about to be imposed upon them and join the original insurgents.

The government, more calm than the people, saw how serious things were becoming, suspended the payment of the European debt, and sent its wise man. Genera! Doblado, at the head of a Mexican army, to treat with us. That army did not defend Vera Cruz against the three great powers with their European fleets. It remained inland.

After a little time the soldiers of the three armies began to die by hundreds. There were 6,000 Spanish, 2,000 French, and 700 English marines in Vera Cruz. The English sent only seamen, to make sure they would not go beyond Vera Cruz and Tampico. Thus the invaders were in a manner blockaded in the midst of famine and pestilence.

General Prim, who fears nothing, went straight to the Mexican encampment, found General Doblado, and had a consultation with him. “What have you come here for?” asked General Doblado. “If you come to impose a government upon us, be sure you will meet with unanimous resistance; but if you only come to demand justice for your countrymen, you shall have it, and we will confess our fault of repudiation of the foreign debt. We are ready to treat, and give you full satisfaction in damages.” “Then we shall have no trouble,” said General Prim. “My instructions are formal. We are not to interfere with the. internal government of Mexico; we come only to demand reparation of damages to our citizens. But we cannot remain where we are.” “I understand you,” said General Doblado. “You cannot stay in the Chiquihuite pass. I will retire thirty leagues inland, and you cans come to Orizaba or Cordoba, where you will find a healthy country and plenty of provisions. The inhabitants shall be allowed to supply you. We will treat you justly and amicably, but I require two things of you: First, if we come to no agreement you will restore the positions we have voluntarily abandoned; second, to pacify impetuous Mexicans, you will, permit the Mexican flag to float by the side of the Spanish, French, and English flags.”

Well, gentlemen, we can now consider those events calmly, and I ask you, could any objection be made to those conditions? Important positions were given up to us for the purpose of an amicable arrangement, and if that could not be effected it was natural to give them back again. Moreover, we had said we came to demand satisfaction for our country-men, and not to overthrow the government, and it was but just to let the Mexican flag wave, under such circumstances, by the side of the flags of the other three nations.

These terms were accepted, and they became the basis of the Soledad convention, so falsely interpreted in Europe. It was signed on the 19th of February. Thanks to it, the allied troops were permitted to go to Orizaba. They would have starved in Vera Cruz. As it was, the road to Orizaba was strewn with the dead.

If they had not intended to treat with us, Vera Cruz could easily have been continuously blockaded and our forces starved to death within its walls. There is, then, no doubt about the sincerity of their intention to treat with us

Fixed at Orizaba, the French, English, and Spanish, instead of treating with General Doblado, began to quarrel among themselves about their respective demands. The English wanted 80,000,000. It was too much, I am sure; but the English had been in the habit of working Mexican mines on a large scale, and in destroying a few of them many millions might be involved, and the English had lent much money to Mexico; yet 80,000,000 seems enormous sum to demand.

The Spaniards only demanded 40,000,000. They have a considerable trade with Mexico, and own much property in the country, and they had been expelled several times and once by Santa Anna. We can understand, then, the origin of their claims.

As to ourselves, we had formed an agreement some time after the capture of San Juan de Ulua, in 1853, giving us an important sum. Seven years passed, and we demanded | 60,000,000, an enormous sum; but, as the parties did not wish to judge each other, the English and Spanish said nothing.

I will remark one thing: In 1865, when the evacuation was first thought of, we treated with Maximilian and fixed our indemnity at 40,000,000 in paper, representing 20,000,000 in specie. This sum was for claims of merchants before the war, as well as claims of those who had lost during it, the latter claim amounting to one-third of the total sum. So you see, by our own estimates, 10,000,000 would have been enough to satisfy our countrymen; and even if 20,000,000 or 30,000,000 had been asked, I think we could have got it.

Yet the demand of 60,000,000 was not contested at Orizaba; but the English and Spanish did oppose the Jecker claim of 75,000,000, which was to be added to the 200,000,000 claimed by the three nations together.

It was asked, How could we take from Mexico three or four years’ entire revenue ? It was exorbitant! On this point the plenipotentiaries agreed to refer the subject to their respective nations, and it was done.

They remained then at Orizaba, waiting for news from Europe, when a new expedition I was reported to have arrived at Vera Cruz. It was a second French expedition, commanded by the brave General Lorencez, composed of four thousand men, and preceded by the principal Mexican refugees, honorable but mistaken men. They proclaimed publicly, almost officially, that they were commanded by the French government to re-establish monarchy in Mexico, and in the name of an Austrian prince. There was of course a great outcry among the plenipotentiaries at Orizaba. The English and Spanish plenipotentiaries exclaimed: See the position in which you place us ! We have promised not to interfere with the Mexican government, and on that promise alone we have obtained pleasant quarters and abundant provisions, and now four thousand Frenchmen come and declare their mission to establish a monarchy in Mexico!

It was said that Almonte was demanded of them. This was not so. It was only asked that Almonte be sent to Havana, where the English had sent Miramon. “Send these men to Havana,” they said, “and if no treaty is concluded, and war breaks out, they can take their chances.”

M. Jurien de la Graviere, the French plenipotentiary, refused. I have the report of the disagreement; it is dated April 9; it was made out by the French legation and signed by the other plenipotentiaries; I will give you the substance of it.

The English and Spanish said the position was not tenable. M. Jurien de la Graviere! said: “Do you suppose the Mexicans voluntarily evacuated this position and left it to us, or that they really intended a negotiation ? ”

The answer to that was: “Certainly the Mexicans would not have granted so much if they had not intended to treat. The small number of our troops could not intimidate them.”

The other parties wanted to wait for instructions, but the Frenchman said, No; he had positive orders. “But we have orders too,” said the others, “and ours is to occupy the coast only, and we are bound in honor to yield our present position.” “Oh, you can give that up if you like,” said M. Jurien de la Graviere, “but I must go on.” And thus the split began. The English and Spanish went back to their ships, in accordance with their instructions, and would not declare war as long as a chance of settlement remained.

General Prim said to our legation: I had the honor to command the French. I regret that I have that honor no longer. I love and admire the French, as the world does, and If am grieved at what they now propose to do. You are going to march against Puebla, and you will surely meet with defeat.

We did march on Puebla. General Lorencez behaved bravely, but he was obliged to retreat. The rainy season then began. We had swollen streams before us and a victorious) army behind us. But we managed to cross the rivers and waited five months for aid from Europe. To the glory of France and the admiration of the world, that was patiently done. Such was the first period of the expedition. It was said to have been for the benefit of our countrymen. They caused it, but it did them no good.

Now by this history I will prove to you the necessity of a controlling power over our government. Was this enterprise mentioned to the assembly? I will not say to you, for many of you were not in it at that time; but was it made known to any assembly ? It could not have been, for it began in 1861, and the assembly was not then in session.

The second expedition started in March, 1862, and the assembly met in January of that year; so there was no excuse for withholding a notice of it. The defeat at Puebla on the 3d of May was known here in June, and on the last of that month seventeen thousand men were called for.

If that check had then been debated as it has been since, the expedition would not have terminated as it has. A whole year was required to repair that check, for Puebla was not taken till the 17th of the following May. This is not a reproach to the brave generals who commanded our troops on that occasion.

General Forey and General Bazaine, since made marshals, acted wisely in not attacking Puebla till they had sufficient forces to do it with honor to the French name, and they had to wait one whole year. It was one of those sieges such as we read of in Spain in former years. The Mexicans behaved like the Spaniards at Lerida and Tarragona; but our soldiers, mostly young and inexperienced, acted like the veterans of the first empire, and Puebla fell into our hands.

Here was the first false step. When a man says he has seen a thing, it influences you greatly, and you can hardly resist. On his return from Mexico, my colleague, Mr. Costa, said to the government; You have but to appear in Mexico, and the whole country will rise in your favor.” Such language had its influence on the government.

If that control had existed over the government, a responsible cabinet, acting under the eyes of the sovereign of a true constitutional monarchy, could not have committed the error it did.

I spoke of it in 1864. The government was told it had but to appear. Now our army had been two years in Mexico, and had got no further than Puebla We found men who could not contend with us in the open field, but men, like the Spaniards, who seized the passes and defiles and continued to annoy us. They evidently looked for assistance from a neighboring nation, and as the old Spaniards expected aid from England, the Mexicans expected aid from the United States of America.

In 1860 the Mexicans demanded the application of the principles of ‘89, and they thought they had obtained them. After the proclamation of those principles, the church property was sold. This was in the hands of the English and French, as well as Mexicans. In the midst of contending political parties, created by this policy, what could be Prince Maximilian’s situation if he came to rule in Mexico? He would have to do what no other government had dared, to oust the purchasers of the national property, or if he did not, he would lose the support of the clergy, the very party that had called him to power. How could his position be tenable under such circumstances ?

The wealth of Mexico was mentioned. I have told you what I thought of that, and there is not a man returned from Mexico who has not my opinion. Formerly all the precious metals came from America to Europe through Spain, at the rate of 200,000,000 or 250,000,000 a year, and the most of it came from Mexico. The world then thought Mexico an inexhaustible mine of wealth. That was a century ago; but California has been developed since, and yields from 400,000,000 to 500,000,000 a year, and Australia gives almost as much So Mexico cannot be compared to modern money-giving countries. I believe its mines are very rich; but ores of precious metals are reduced by fire or mercury. Now, there is a want of fuel in Mexico; the quicksilver has to be brought from Spain, and that was one of the strong bonds between the two countries. Spain sent its mercury from Almaden and brought back silver from Mexico.

Now, in California there are very rich ores of gold and silver by the side of mines of mercury, so that the working is comparatively easy. In Mexico there is no similar convenience. Miners will tell you that a cubic yard of ore that yields $75 in California can be worked with profit, whereas the same amount of ore must give $400 in Mexico to make it profitable; so you see the metallic wealth of Mexico is greatly exaggerated, chiefly on account of the difficulty of working the mines and extracting the precious metals.

There is another question: can the yield of Mexico in precious metals compare with the United States and Brazil in their yield of cotton and coffee ? Brazil sends to Europe alone 300,000,000 of francs in coffee every year. The soil of Mexico is very fertile on the coast and it is very unhealthy; it rains for six months, and then the ground is scorched for six months by a burning sun. Irrigation is required for successful cultivation in the uplands, and then ail the arable land belongs to the clergy or to wealthy landholders. For these reasons the soil of Mexico has never yielded enough cereals to feed its own population.

Thus, with a yield of 100,000,000 or 150,000,000 from mines hard to work, with no fixed government, Mexico could not support a government like the one you propose. If the prince you sent there did not act in a certain way he would lose the support of the clergy, the very party that invited him, and they would become his enemies. France would have to sacrifice many men and squander much money to secure the new emperor in his place, after many years, and then she would find certain resistance in the United States. These were the formidable objections to the new Mexican establishment.

If the French government were constituted as I wish it was, this grand mistake in its policy would not have happened. Why were we not told of what was going on? After the capture of Puebla in May, our forces got into the capital in June. A provisional government was formed, consisting of General Almonte, La Bastida, the Archbishop of Mexico, and General Salas all honorable men, ignorant of their true situations. A council of honorable men was then formed. The English commodore says they were respectable and rich, but knew nothing about making governments.

A meeting was next called, numbering 215 persons, to vote on the question. All but two voted for the restoration of a monarchy, and it was decided, to offer the crown to the Archduke Maximilian.

A deputation was immediately despatched to Europe.

During this time the French army did not rest in the city of Mexico, but took possession of the rich, populous, and well-cultivated districts of Guanajuata and Queretaro. The French were welcomed, for Mexicans were partial to them, but there was a certain reserve, because intelligent people doubted the success of the enterprise. I could show you a letter of a respectable merchant, who had made a fortune in that country, describing the situation exactly. The French authorities were well acquainted with him. He had returned to spend some time in Finance, but suddenly went back to Mexico. All his predictions were fulfilled, I will not mention his name, but you can all read the letter. He said, “I found Mexico a little more quiet than when I left, but I knew men and money would have to be sent there for many years before perfect peace could be established. The Mexicans are conquered, but they have not been subdued. Our troops find no resistance anywhere, but as soon as they evacuate a place the liberals come in, take quiet possession, and rule without opposition. General Bazaine conducts himself prudently,” &c; and he adds: “We are now expecting the archduke, who is to bring peace with him. I hope he may, but I cannot believe he will.”

Such was the opinion of disinterested men.

As I have said, a deputation was sent to Europe in 1863. It went to Paris, and then to Miramar, to see Prince Maximilian. The prince, you know, was an intelligent, generous man who admired grandeur, but wanted the experience to judge properly the enterprise that was proposed to him.

He foresaw many of the difficulties, and decided to accept the situation for these reasons. The French were to sustain him till he was firmly fixed upon his throne in Mexico, not only with arms, but with means raised by European loans.

He came to Paris in 1864, soon after the meeting of the present legislature. The spirit of control began; we had not the right of interpellation, but we could form an address, and discuss any question in an amendment to that address.

You honored me with your attention at that time when I presented the objections I now repeat in brief: continuous resistance of the Mexicans; hard times for Maximilian, from the moment of his arrival in Mexico; little benefit to financial speculators; an indefatigable perseverance to attain anything, and constant risk of American intermeddling. I also said to you then, Well, gentlemeu, we have repaired the check at Puebla, and now we ought to stop. The prince is not yet gone; he depends on you; you can stop him, and I beg you to do it.

The reply to me was this: What, shall we desert the Mexican refugees, General Almonte, and Bishop La Bastida ?

And my answer was as follows: You hesitate about abandoning the Mexican refugees, Almonte and La Bastida; but after you have seduced a prince of one of the first dynasties in Europe to go to Mexico, you surround him with dangers and then desert him. That is what you will do. I say you did me the honor to hear me, but you did not do me the favor to heed me.

M. Rouher spoke the next day, and said some hard words against me. I will quote from him to convince you how we must beware of the impressions of the moment. Here is what he said:

“And now I will tell you what I think. Passion will become extinct: the recollection of money disputes will die out when public prosperity revives; truth will be freed from her fetters, and a glorious day for posterity will dawn. If any one will then cast his eye on our I rancid debates, our superannuated quarrels, he will speak for history and say, that man was a genius who had the courage to open sources of new prosperity for the nation of which he was the chief, in spite of resistance, obstacles, and mistrust. He was the apostle of a bold policy, prudent, and wise, that did not confine its views to the present generation, but understood the age in which it existed as well as the future. He confessed that European equilibrium was no longer the same beyond the Alps, or over the Pyrenees, on the Vistula, or round the Euxine sea. His ideas extended over the world, and where French interests existed the French flag was sent to protect them.

“Yes, that will be a glorious page of history, and the man who writes it will say, like a sovereign speaking to an assembled nation, those foreign expeditions were undertaken to vindicate our honor, and they have redounded to our glory, ending in the triumphs of our interests.”

I quote the above words to prove that public interests ought to be publicly discussed. If that had been done at the beginning of this expedition, it might not have ended as it did.

The prince left Paris and went to Rome, where he had some advice to ask of his Holiness the Pope. The august chief of the Romish church could decide anything. The question was about church property in Mexico, and it was a hard one.

Surely, when the court of Rome saw the French clergy, no longer proprietors but stipendiaries, behaving righteously and prospering, it could see that the perpetual inheritance of the church could be abolished in Mexico, without damage to the clergy or religion. The court of Rome could take no initiative action in the matter. It might give its assent as it did to France when the act was accomplished, but it could take no part in its consummation. Pius IX welcomed the prince to Rome, and the Mexican situation was considered: but Rome could promise nothing. Maximilian then returned to Miramar to settle the financial business of the enterprise. He acknowledged the English and French debt, and he was promised 270,000,000 to keep him two years in Mexico. We had a bill of 300,000,000 presented to us, when in fact, the amount was only 270,000,000. Besides this, a six per cent, loan for 200,000,000 was stipulated for, intended to yield 126,000,000, but which only gave 102,000,000. Two years of the interest was to be left in Europe to pay England, two years’ interest for our debt, and two years’ interest for the loan itself, leaving scarcely 40,000,000 free. Thus, you see, the prince had to leave Europe with small means, and when he arrived in Mexico it is doubtful if he had more than 30,000,000 left.

He quit Europe in May, 1864, and arrived at Vera Cruz in June. They all tell us he was kindly received, and much is made out of the report.

Even the youngest of us here have seen new governments spring up, and they were all applauded in their birth.

Maximilian was well received because our army was with him. Our soldiers had taken possession of rich mining districts and the new emperor went to visit them. He was welcomed with reserve, because sensible men doubted the success of his bold enterprise.

When he came back to the capital he did all he could to found a government. If you, gentlemen, have spent the time that I have in reading and studying that admirable monument of the human mind called the “Correspondence of Napoleon I,” you will find a sad resemblance between this Mexican expedition and the Spanish expedition of 1808.

Maximilian, I say, returned to the city of Mexico and issued decrees just as the brothers of the first emperor did who were sent to distant kingdoms. First, he organized a council of state, an excellent institution that nobody admires more than I do; then he formed prefectures and tried to establish courts of justice; he endeavored to raise an army with plenty of officers but few soldiers; he attempted to construct railroads; he granted to an English company the construction of a railroad from Mexico to Vera Cruz. After that he addressed an appeal to all emigrants, expecting the American war would drive European emigrants to Mexico; and last of all, he took up the church question, the most delicate of all.

Monsenor la Bastida had already quit General Almonte because he would not take the church property from its legal purchasers, and the emperor Maximilian appealed to M. Meglia, the apostolic nuncio,” who had just arrived. His reply was very wise. He said: I cannot take the property from those who bought it and have paid for it. I will look over the sales, and all irregular purchases shall be annulled and the property shall be restored to the unsold estates, to be submitted to the decision of the Roman court.

What happened might have been foreseen. The clergy would consent to no arrangement. Maximilian became angry, and a rupture with the clergy was the consequence. His views were contained in a very good letter published at the time. That act isolated him, and his only future dependence was in the French army.

In the autumn, which is the business time of year there, when the summer rains are over, the French army was again set in motion. Three columns were sent north, over 100 leagues of space, and you would be astonished to know what number of men actually went.

28,000 men were sent out in 1862, and the number was increased to 40,000 in 1863. The line of operations was to be guarded—Vera Cruz, Orizaba, Puebla, Mexico; so Marshal Bazaine could not have had more than 15,000 or 20,000 men to send north, over 400 or 500 leagues through all sorts of dangers.

These columns were divided. One went towards San Luis Potosi and Tampico; another in the centre went to Durango; while the third branched off towards Mazatlan, in Sinaloa. Juarez had fallen back to Chihuahua; and though it was reported he had left Mexican territory, he never went out of the country. Yet, we had to stop somewhere. We could not hold a country of which we could not cover a hundredth part.

After six months’ campaigning, the prince discovered the true situation of the country. It was filled with brigands wherever the French forces were not in occupation. Thus completely isolated from all protection, the emperor had to concentrate the troops around the capital. Alone he was no more than a ship on the vast ocean. There was no Mexican army to depend upon; there was no way to form one. The great trouble was want of money. The emperor first supposed that 90,000,000 would suffice for all his wants. He set down 20,000,000 for the public debt, 20,000,000 for the Mexican army, 25,000,000 for the French army, and 25,000,000 for all other expenses. He knew he could not raise the 90,000,000 by taxation, but he hoped to make up the balance with the 30,000,000 or 40,000,000 he brought from Europe with him, for one year’s expenses at least. For the next years expenses he might depend on Europe.

After six months, in 1865, he had to revise the budget. I have them both. On examination the second amounted to 180,000,000 francs instead of 90,000,000, as at first estimated; just double. The consequence was he had to appeal to Europe again for help.

The first loan, called the Mexican six per cent., originally sold at 63 francs, had fallen to 50. A similar plan was impossible now; a magnificent plan was devised to catch small capitalists. It was proposed to issue bonds at 340 francs for 500, with an interest of 30 francs, about 10 per cent., and a grand lottery connected with it. There were to be two drawings a year, one every six months, for the sum of 500,000 francs; two of 100,000; four of 50,000, and sixty of 10,000 francs. It was also agreed that a sinking fund should be reserved to pay the debt in 50 years.

It was very natural that many poor people of little information, expecting 10 or 12 per cent, and two lottery prizes a year, should be tempted to invest their money in such an enterprise.

You also know what the public papers said on the subject, and that all the government officials were put to work to persuade the people that the loan was the best possible investment.

The loan was even debated here. Convinced that facts only could enlighten the public powers, I took no part in the discussion; but I must say that I put little faith in what the advocates of the government said. M. Corta spread before us all the wonders of Mexico, and when we expressed a doubt we were hissed. M. Corta had seen what he told about; then why should we doubt it ? But I said to myself I, too, have seen persons who have been there, and have talked with them; nobody would listen to me.

Humboldt said Mexico yielded in his time 100,000,000 and spent only half of it, leaving 50,000,000 for the crown of Spain; and others said the yield might safely be set down at 200,000,000 when the population increased. That is what M. Humboldt said.

It is true that Mexico did yield 100,000,000 under Spanish dominion, but it is forgotten that Spain then distributed that wealth through Europe and gained 25 per cent, on it, when only 6 or 7 per cent, could be made out of it now. You forget that Spain then furnished all Europe with tobacco, and could sell ten millions’ worth for 40,000,000. You must, therefore, deduct 40,000,000 from the revenues of that time, either for tobacco or for mining taxes.

When we come to consider the outlay of Spain at that time, we must remember that those famous galleons that bore the merchandise of Europe to America and freighted back her precious metals were partly defrayed by Mexico, to 15,000,000 at least.

We must not forget to take 5,000,000 from the 50,000,000 for the mercury of Almaden; and lastly we must put down the 30,000,000 of debt that did not exist in the time of the Spanish domination.

So, instead of counting 100,000,000 of revenue, and 50,000,000 for expenses, you must say 70,000,000 profit and 100,000,000 expense.

That was the trouble with Maximilian, and it has been the case ever since the so-called independence; for all their governments spent 100,000,000 and collected only 70,000,000, having a yearly deficit of 30,000,000, which they made up by foreign loans, the sale of church property, and the sale of large provinces to the United States.

Some say Humboldt’s 100,000,000 ought to amount to 200,000,000 now. There was an increase, and our newspapers applauded it daily; but it was like the beginning of our African expedition; the presence of the French army was the causeof the increase, and some supposed it real.

And then some people proposed an income tax in a country where there is no census or assessment, where it is hard to raise 5,000,000 or 6,000,000 from the clergy and rich land owners, and this was estimated at 50,000,000. The plan had not been tried in that country.

Some proposed a tax of 20 per cent, on the precious metals, when I have already told you it was hard to get 6 or 7 per cent.; and this revenue item was set down at 25,000,000.

Next came tobacco, that had never yielded more than 4,000,000 or 5,000,000, and they put it down for 25,000,000.

Thus the sum total of 200,000,000 was made up.

On this data some member exclaimed: What! can’t pay 350,000,000 out of 200,000,000 revenue!

Finally, the minister of state, who advocated M. Corta’s loan, told us of a general who said this to him: “Mexico will certainly yield 300,000,000 to any nation that will overrun it; and if so much can be made by people who destroy it, much more can be made by the people who will restore, cultivate, and enrich the land.”

He did not say precisely that the revenues would amount to 300,000,000, but his argument sustained M. Corta’s assertion.

The minister of state was displeased with me, and said: “You wish to discourage capitalists as you formerly discouraged the Archduke Maximilian. But the capitalists have decided; a telegram reports that the loan is subscribed.”

And the minister of state added: “We must remain a few months longer in Mexico, and what are a few months ? Yes, we will stay there till the object of the expedition is accomplished; the French army will not return till it has triumphed, and comes back to receive the crown it has won by its meritorious acts.”

So much, gentlemen, for getting in a false position, as the minister of state has done. I blame the position, and not the minister, for the minister of finance fell into the same error and signed the treaty that was read to you some days ago. But what was very strange, in the very operation he said it was an equivocal affair, in short, a bad business.

Thus was the result of the expedition prognosticated. There was a secret treaty that some of us knew nothing about, and that was what gave the minister of finance his suspicions.

I have told you this, gentlemen, to prove to you the necessity of united action among ministers. Without that, they are constantly liable to trouble; for, without concerted action, when one does not know what the other is doing, when one comes here to extol an enterprise that another considers hazardous, and even so doubtful as to require a secret treaty to insure the company against loss, they ought to expect trouble.

The loan should have produced 168,000,000. No account was rendered to us, but you all know those very expensive financial operations gave but little aid to the Mexican empire.

Well, as I said, the loan ought to have produced 168,000,000, and I believe it did produce that much; but how much did the Emperor of Mexico get of it ? It was necessary to leave a sum sufficient to pay the principal in Europe; two years interest was to be left; a sufficient sum to pay the lottery prizes every six months was to be left; the French minister must have enough to balance his budget; 12,000,000 had to go to pay our army for the half year of 1864 ; 25,000,000 for the year 1865; so, of this second loan, Maximilian only got 40.000,000.

You see these resources were sent to him in parcels.

In 1866 the situation became worse. He had been there but one year, and he was already deeply involved. Our army had to stop operations, and concentrate. And now the United States began to triumph, which greatly encouraged the Mexican insurgents, who, the imperialists said, had left the country. They were at our right, on the Rio Grande, depending on that river and the Americans, from whom they expected assistance, and some of whom came very near a collision with our soldiers.

The rebel resistance began first to be felt in Chihuahua, where Juarez had gone, and whence they said he had been driven. There was a young general named Corona, who gave us considerable trouble in Sinaloa; Regules annoyed us on the Pacific, and Porfirio Diaz in Oaxaca.

As troubles increased, resources diminished: and some of the French fund had to go to pay the Mexican army. General Bazaine said to the Emperor: “If you want me to raise a Mexican army let us have a draft.” “But,” said the Emperor, “if a conscription law is passed, they will say I have brought the worst feature of European policy with me here.”

I mentioned the Spanish expedition of 1808 to you just now. The same is happening in Mexico that happened there. The generals of Napoleon first complained of Joseph, and he complained of them. Now, I believe when two people complain of each other they are both wrong. People in trouble together blame each other for bringing the trouble on. If I put a man in trouble, most assuredly I ought to assume the responsibility of his situation. This is the case with Mexico, and the trouble began with a quarrel between the French authorities and the Emperor.

There was an unfortunate event that caused much misery and suffering; it was the decree of the 3d of October, 1865. It revealed the weakness of the government. Do you know what was said on every side? There were guerillas in every place not held by our troops, and the people said, the government is so weak it permits brigands to infest the land. It was hard to say which were the robbers and which the patriots.

I will not blame any one for that decree. I will only say how it affected the situation. There was a general cry against the weakness of a government that permitted brigands to infest the country; but they did not see that, by the side of a few brigands, there were many true patriots defending their country, and whose duty was to defend it.

The decree of the 3d of October offered pardon to those who would surrender, and punished with death those who continued to resist, to be tried by court-martial in 24 hours. It soon became known to the enemy, and two of their chief officers were executed in consequence. They were Arteaga and Salazar. Perhaps you have read their heartrending letters to their mothers.

The effect of those executions was prodigious! Many French merchants told me the grief was general for the death of those very estimable men.

What ought to teach men to resist sudden impulse and be just is, that Mendez, who ordered those executions, has just lost his own life. And I will say to those now in power in Mexico: Keep eternal justice before your eyes, for the law of retaliation is bloody, and many fall thereby.

The decree produced a great sensation in the United States, and proposals were made to Congress. The civil war was over then, and the United States could speak and act freely. They remonstrated, and called Mr. Drouyn de L’huys, then minister of foreign affairs, to account for the execution of the decrees. I will not blame the honorable gentleman for his reply; he threw the blame on Maximilian.

The government of the United States did not insist, but demanded an explanation of our intentions; asked how long we designed remaining in Mexico; the language was not insulting to France; but the demand was imperious, and the form of it was such as France could tolerate.

The United States said: “We think it very natural for you to be at war with Mexico, and we have no right to object to a European army making war in America; but you do not come to ask justice for your mistreated countrymen, you come to establish a monarchy in Mexico. What would you say if we were to send an expedition to any part of Europe to establish a republic ? You would not permit it. Well, we ask you now, how long you propose to remain in Mexico yet ?”

Mr. Drouyn de L’huys’s reply was: Recognize Maximilian and you will hasten our departure.

No, said the United States, we will not recognize Maximilian; he is a stranger to us; the republican government and its president, Juarez, are what we see in Mexico. We have great respect for the French nation, and if we have sympathy for any European nation, it is for France; but we are grieved to think it has staked its honor on the Mexican expedition, else our peace with it would be impossible.

We had been told in 1864 that the army would only remain in Mexico that year; it was the same next year; in 1866 we feared a war with the United States. It was impossible to continue the promises without fulfilling them some time.

The troops were withdrawn, and I congratulate our government on it. The sacrifice of s-o many men was useless, as any man of sense could see, particularly when we dreaded a war with the United States.

We could do no better; we were obliged to retreat. We promised the United States to retire in three detachments; one in the autumn of 1866, the second in the spring of 1867, and the third in the fall of the same year.

But there is one thing I do not approve of, and that is, I do not think it was right to extort 12 millions in 1864, and 25 millions in 1865, from Maximilian in his suffering situation, just to balance our budgets. I said to you then: These sums you demand of Maximilian will do you no good, but reduce to misery that unfortunate government that has no means of existence now. Not content with the 37½ millions from the second loan, we asked 40 millions for citizens’ claims, worth 20 millions in specie; and to pay subscribers we insisted on taking half the custom-house revenues of Vera Cruz and Tampico, the last resources of the perishing empire. M. Saillard was sent to make the proposal to the distressed emperor, and he was profoundly moved. And that was not the only source of his grief; he had heard of the demand of the United States to have the French troops withdrawn from Mexico, and he believed it was a collusion between the two countries to force him to abdicate and restore the republicanism of Juarez.

This was not true; but it affected the sensitive emperor so much, he determined to send the unfortunate empress to Europe.

While the Moniteur declared that all was quiet in Mexico, a telegraphic despatch announced the arrival of the Princess Charlotte at Saint Nazaire.

The unhappy lady was received at the Tuileries with due respect. She was soon satisfied that there was no collusion between France and the United States to force her husband to abdicate in favor of Juarez. But the Emperor could not tell her that the French army would remain in Mexico, and France furnish funds for its support. So the princess quit Paris and went to Rome, where she found her greatest trouble. You all know what happened to her there: she lost her mind. It is one of the sad events of this century.

In the mean time the Emperor Napoleon had modified the retreat; and very wisely, as I think. He determined that the first departure should be delayed till the spring of 1867, when the entire army would be withdrawn. Unfortunately this change of programme was not announced to the United States by our new minister, M. de Moustier, and it gave rise to some unpleasant disputes with that government.

Finally it was resolved to quit Mexico at once, in the spring of 1867, and the resolution was carried out last March. At the same time we determined to send General Castelnau to Mexico, and the United States decided to send Mr. Campbell and the celebrated General Sherman. We heard nothing of those missions; but we had an idea of them from despatches published in America. We do not see why they were kept secret. We learn through Mr. Bigelow, the United States minister, that General Castelnau’s mission was to prepare the evacuation, to settle all difficulties about it, and to ask the Emperor Maximilian if he would remain in Mexico or leave; and he wisely advised him to leave. It was even said that Maximilian had left, and in that case it was necessary to come to an understanding with whatever government existed there. There was but one other government, that of President Juarez; and you will allow me to say, I think we had done better to treat with Juarez two years ago, when he was conquered, than to treat with him now that he is conqueror.

The United States ordered Mr. Campbell and General Sherman to find President Juarez and acknowledge him alone, discarding all his rivals, to give him moral, and even material support on the frontier, to recommend him to prudence towards the French army, and to humanity towards French citizens. These instructions were required by the situation, and were perfectly avowable.

Unfortunately these two missions were so similar in their aims, they were well calculated to excite suspicion in the excited imagination of the unlucky prince then reigning in Mexico. He heard of the evacuation and the Empress Charlotte’s calamity at the same time, and the news threw him into a fever. He was on a visit to Orizaba when he heard of the double mission of General Castelnau and the two American ministers. He was then convinced that France and the United States intended to force him to abdicate in favor of Juarez, and the idea annoyed him exceedingly. What seemed strange was, General Castelnau and the American envoys arrived at Vera Cruz at the same time. Under these circumstances the party that had deserted him came to him at Orizaba and offered him their assistance; even the clergy promised pecuniary aid. Considering himself abandoned by France, and moved by the generous offers of new friends, after some hesitation he determined to go back to Mexico and do his best to save his crown and his partisans.

There were published in the capital at that time some papers that reported we had quarrelle 1 with the prince whom we had tried to fix upon a throne. The French army retired in good order, without any of those troublesome incidents that often disturb the necessarily hasty retreat of armies on certain occasions.

We left our countrymen in unpleasant predicaments; we left the unfortunate prince to do his duty in a last effort to save those who had adhered to him, and we find he has sacrificed his life to save his honor.

Such is the truth of that whole mournful history; you now have it from beginning to end, and I can assure you that what I have said comes from reliable sources. If I am mistaken in some details the errors were unavoidable, but the general facts are substantially as I have given them. Now you will permit me to give a summary of those facts, and to discuss them singly.

The expedition lasted six years. The first six months, between ‘61 and ‘62, were spent in landing on the Mexican coast, in fixing ourselves, arranging a negotiation that was certain to succeed and satisfy our complaining countrymen, and in then breaking up to follow the dominant idea in the enterprise. We were checked, but succeeded in repairing it within a year. We should have stopped then; it was the grand mistake to continue the march after that.

Now we had been in the country 18 months, and could judge what it was. We might have seen that resistance on the part of the inhabitants, supported by a neighboring nation, and the unhealthiness of the climate, would be too much for us. We could have seen that the prince could not sustain himself, placed as he was between the clergy and the opposing party, both of whom he had offended; that his resources were insufficient, and to develop them would require a residence of many years in Mexico, with the support of 60,000 men; and, finally, that we would have to fight the United States in the end. Therefore we should have halted as soon as our check was repaired. We did not do so, though ominous reports floated round us for 18 months.

The years ‘63 and ‘64 were spent in going to Europe for Maximilian, persuading him to go to Mexico, and carrying him there.

At first he was hopeful; but as early as ‘65 he saw breakers ahead. First, his funds failed and he begged of Europe. The famous loan you all know of was contracted, a small portion of it reaching him. He then had to resort to the funds of the French army. Outside troubles forced our army to concentrate, and the country was left a prey to brigands. The emperor tried to terrify them by proclamations, and the deplorable decree of the 3d of October, 1865, was issued. It was universally condemned, and was the immediate cause of intervention on the part of the United States, and their demand of our evacuation.

The year 1866 was passed in the perplexities of evacuation, and the sad drama only ended in 1867. You are already acquainted with the consequences. We went to Mexico to secure a few millions for our countrymen, and we might have procured them at first. Now we will have to pay not only those millions but the expenses of the war, with the damages to citizens who suffered in it. This shows the expedition was a complete failure.

I told the minister of state that the whole commerce of Mexico was not worth the trouble we were taking for our people in that country. When he was vaunting the trade of Mexico he included all South America, and said it was worth 540,000,000. It was well he was mistaken in his estimates, else our present commerce with the New World would be gone. But this unlucky expedition has greatly injured our commerce with South America. France was once feared and respected in that part of the world. Is she now ? Let me tell you, France is no longer dreaded there. This is a sad truth.

I will not speak of the royal misfortunes of the Old World, but I believe the brilliant idea of regenerating the Latin race is over. The chief grandeur and beauty of this enterprise was to revive the Latin race and make it oppose the invasions of the Anglo-Saxons. What and where is the Latin race to-day? It is given up to anarchy and abominable crimes, while the Anglo-Saxon race that you wanted to stop is now triumphant, and we are forced to wish that the very race we wanted to stop in its course may land in Mexico and take vengeance for our murdered and outraged citizens—what we cannot do ourselves.

And now, having told you of the results of the expedition across the ocean, I will tell you the harm it will do us in Europe. The condition of Europe underwent great changes last year. One of the greatest revolutions of the world occurred in Germany last year. We needed all our strength at that time, and wanted our arms to be free. I know that France could have commanded respect, even with the Mexican troubles on her hands, but she preferred to be unembarrassed. It was not the 30,000 men we had in Mexico that troubled us, but the complications arising out of that expedition. Our artillery was not in order, and our standing army had been reduced, and our finances were diminished by helping Mexico, Thus that luckless adventure injured us in America and Europe. The instruction we ought to derive from it is this, that every government ought to have a powerful control.

We are ail liable to mistakes. I confess that sad law of humanity, and I reproach no one; but what prevents the fault of one from becoming the fault of all are the organized resistances that are found in every state. Some faults cannot be amended, but this is not one of them. France was not entirely absorbed in the Mexican expedition. English and German journals made fun of us for it, though they were to profit by it. They said, facetiously, Oh, our turbulent neighbors must have some occupation; that will busy them and keep them from troubling us. Such was the opinion of the expedition in Europe.

And now shall I dare to say what this house thought of it? I believe the house disapproved of it, and if it did not oppose the expedition it was through respect for the government. It is well known that many important and influential blamed themselves for encouraging the expedition, and they will always regret the act. So the nation did not favor the expedition, and the public men were opposed to it, and yet it took place and lasted six years. My conclusions from these facts are, that firm and respectful resistance to the chief of a state is the greatest service that can be rendered him on certain occasions.

I have always been counted among the men in France who seek liberty under monarchy. When a man sacrifices his political existence to his interests, his convictions must be sincere. Monarchy must be understood in two ways. First, it is a prince who rules despotically, who is served by ministers executing the orders given them, acting without concert, and often ignorant of what their colleagues do. This is one kind of monarchy. Another is, a chief of state having devoted and respectful ministers around him, acting in concert, deliberating jointly upon affairs of state in government council, discussing ail questions, great or small, public or private, submitting them boldly but respectfully to the chief of the state, executing only his orders that conform to their views, relying on an assembly that can instruct them, and depending entirely upon public opinion, which should be law in all governments. This is the second form of monarchy, a government as free as a republic. It is the form I have wanted for forty years, the form I now desire, and I believe it is the form that all true patriots would like to have in their country at this time.

(The president called the gentleman to order by reminding him that he was not now speaking on Mexican affairs, but upon the constitution.)

M. Thiers continues: Mr. President, the subject is so serious I cannot refrain from bringing constitutional as well as moral aid in its solution. When I gave my opinion privately to some of my colleagues they exclaimed, We are coming to the very form of government you deem most salutary to the success of governments. Very well; I am glad they think so, but our march is slow in that direction; I would go faster. We must not stop in the way, for on that very way we found the Mexican expedition and the German troubles. We want a more rapid progress in our institutions.

(The house took a recess for 15 minutes, when M. Jules Favre took the floor.)

M. Jules Favre. Gentlemen, in taking the floor I rely less upon my strength in debate than upon my duty, for in questions of such importance as this I think there should be a free expression of opinion on all sides. You have just listened to M. Granier de Cassagnac’s defence of the Mexican expedition, now universally condemned by public opinion. He analyzed its principles and its design, and, not considering the accidents that prevented its success, he said it ought to have been approved by the country and by this chamber. I regret to say I cannot coincide with him in his opinion. I will not dwell upon the subject now, for I have often expressed my opinion in regard to it, and I retain the same opinion I had in 1862. The interests of our citizens in Mexico did not need an expedition on such a grand scale. Nobody will now deny that if this chamber had been enlightened on the subject at a proper time it would not have assented to the unfortunate project that prevailed. M. Granier de Cassagnac has detailed to you the duties of a great nation, and of those who have the care of its government. These duties were, to defend its frontier and develop its internal industry; to extend its commerce to every quarter of the globe, and thus demonstrate the country’s prosperity. And every French citizen, live in what region he may, must be protected by his government.

I will not contest that generous doctrine, but I beg my honorable colleague to admit that it is wrong to attempt such protection when it would be against the general interests of the country. I will not contest the justice of my colleague’s theory, but I will simply ask him if he thinks it the duty of a wise government, conscious of its responsibility, with great interests at stake, to rush into a rash expedition, and spend 800,000,000 of money and sacrifice 30,000 or 40,000 innocent lives in a useless and unprofitable war. I must beg leave to differ with him, and I do say that this Mexican expedition ought to be condemned by every man of sound sense, and by every citizen who loves his country.

Our honorable and eminent colleague, M. Thiers, in describing the Mexican expedition to you, as he has just done, sought the cause of the errors he pointed out to a want of control. He said the responsibility so often invoked by the government is theoretical and not practical. In fact, there is a want of control when the house places absolute confidence in the government and does not dare to investigate its acts, and hence those painful spectacles that sometimes greet our vision. But I say the want of control is not the only reproach for men who now advocate the government. The house was consulted too late, when the expedition had already started, and I blame the government for not telling us the facts, for disguising the real designs of the expedition till they could no longer be kept secret.

When the ministers first mentioned the Mexican expedition to us they had the London convention of 1861 in their hands; they said it meant to aid our countrymen in Mexico; was intended merely to demand satisfaction, such as former governments had sought and obtained.; that was why our vessels sailed for Mexico. And what did the opposition say at the time ? They did not dispute the right to demand satisfaction for injuries, even from a government half civilized; but the party was restive, and said to the government, You talk of chastisement for injuries to our citizens, but do you mean nothing more ? Are you not taking advantage of that great and lamentable dissension that divides the American republic ? Have you not some secret thought of aiding the southern confederacy at some future time, not far distant? All sensible men in Europe think so. Is it not to weaken the northern republic, to discourage and embarrass it, that you carry the French flag to the centre of a Spanish republic? Your press is manacled here, but we learned from foreign papers that the French government did not invade Mexico to avenge the wrongs of our citizens, but to help a neighboring power in a very different undertaking. Look under the veil of diplomacy and you will discover that the intention was to march a combined army against the Mexican republic, destroy it, raise a throne upon the ruins, and place a prince upon it.

That, gentlemen, was what we declared when the Mexican expedition was first discussed. We even went further; we mentioned the prince with whom negotiations had been opened, and that prince was no other than Maximilian, who has just fallen a victim to his courage and his evil star. And what did the minister of that day say to our insinuations ? He boldly denied the. truth of our assertions.

A colleague who did what I am doing now was answered in this manner: “England and Spain have joined us. The same proposals have been made to the United States, but the United States seemed to think we had ulterior views beyond the reparation of actual damages, and they did not agree with us. Their policy saw things in a different light, and we decided to act without them. Is not the union of three powers sufficient to show that your suspicions have no foundation? In spite of open facts, you persist in discovering secret machinations of France for the benefit of some foreign power.

“When such suspicions are expressed there ought to be some foundation for them, some slight proof at least, and you have none.”

True, gentlemen, we had no proof then, but time has furnished proof, and made the most complete refutation of the assertions and of the veracity of the minister who then spoke before this chamber.

As to the reports, continued the honorable gentleman, that gave umbrage to the British ambassador, you will allow me to pass over them. Before starting, the officers said they were going to Mexico to enthrone a foreign prince Do you suppose a diplomatic secret would be intrusted to the first officer starting to Mexico ? You could not think so! If our ally was concerned about the reports, it applied to our minister of foreign affairs, and he contradicted them.

Yes, gentlemen, the reports of sinister invasion were contradicted; but alas, we must say that truth was violated by the minister of foreign affairs, and by the minister who appeared before this chamber. The negotiation that was then denied is now patent; history has recorded it, and we know its origin. Yes, Spain furnished the fatal idea that has cost France some of its best blood and immense treasures. We know that the government was tempted to lend a willing ear to intrigues it should have instantly rejected, to proposals of the Spanish cabinet, coming from Mexican refugees, from men who are ever ready to call the stranger, to help their party, and always ready to calumniate their country. (Could they calumniate their country ? a member asks.) Yes, and are always ready to implore help of those who can serve their ambition. From despatches published by the Spanish government we learn that a negotiation was opened between the cabinet of Madrid and the imperial cabinet, as early as 1859; that objections had been advanced by the imperial cabinet, but they were not of a nature to discourage the cabinet of Madrid.

It is not my business to say what infernal machinations prompted the Spanish cabinet to deceive the French government.

In 1860, two years before the expedition was mentioned to this house, there was another active correspondence between Spain and this country, on the same subject. The subject is thoroughly discussed; the names of the candidates are mentioned and considered; Maximilian is weighed personally and politically; and now you can judge of the importance to be attached to diplomatic and ministerial declarations. The negotiations were denied before this house; the truth was concealed in order to obtain an assent you would never have otherwise given.

Let me give you a fragment of a despatch from the minister of state in the cabinet of Madrid. In 1860 he spoke thus on the subject that now interests us:

“I had a conference with M. Barrot, the French ambassador at this court, on this serious affair, not long ago. He sent my note to the Emperor’s minister of foreign affairs, and has lately read me an extract from one of his despatches, saying that France and England are ready to join us in the effort to establish a permanent government in Mexico, in accordance with the will of the people, and thus put a term to the painful situation in which that unhappy republic has labored so long. M. Thouvenel thinks the best way would be to call a constituent assembly to determine a form of government, and settle all pending questions, of whatever nature and importance. * * * * * *

“Her Majesty’s will is that you have an interview with M. Thouvenel, to determine in what way the three powers can intervene in the disorders of the Mexican republic. Her Majesty’s government thinks that the mere mention of this determination and the first steps that will be taken to carry it out, will suffice to give courage to the honest people of Mexico and predispose them to labor for the establishment of a government that will curb the rebellious spirit that has caused so much harm to that unhappy country.”

Certainly nothing is more laudable than such a proposal, if you look at it in a moral point of view; but if you look at it in a political light, I do not understand it so. If you wish France to use her armies, fleets, and treasure in regulating governments all over the globe, we will have many Mexican expeditions, and many impositions of foreign loans. It is a very foolish idea to want to teach the world morality by cannon shots. No true statesman can possibly approve of so puerile a policy.

Now bear what our ambassador in Madrid wrote to the minister of foreign affairs, on the 11th of October, 1861. The London convention had not been signed, but the terms were settled and it was ready to be concluded. You know its terms ;, they were ostensibly to demand satisfaction for injuries to our citizens in Mexico, and to protect them in future; but the diplomatists had an after-thought, which they did well to conceal, and that is what the French ambassador reveals in his despatch of October 11, 1861, to M. Thouvenel:

“I told the English ambassador I agreed with his government perfectly on one point. Like Lord Russell, I acknowledged the legitimacy of our coercion of Mexico, on account of wrongs from her governments, and that a convention should only relate to the redress of those grievances, and the prevention of their repetition.”

So there was an open convention and a reserved convention. The open convention intended the redress of grievances to our citizens; the reserved convention intended to overturn the Mexican republic and fix Maximilian upon a throne in its place.

In spite of explanations in this document of March 14, 1862, the minister of state was compelled to reveal some truths to this house.

The opposition had a right to be heard, and when the Mexican expedition was brought up we forced the government to hear our voice, and also when the budget was discussed.

This time the minister of state changed his tone, and spoke as follows :

“Many Mexicans have long thought and openly declared that the only form of government that could restore order and preserve peace in Mexico, was a monarchy. Even some presidents of the Mexican republic thought of opening negotiations with Europe to effect that purpose. Among political men interested in the question, many were convinced that it was the only form that could put down a few hundred men who were constantly contending among themselves for the central or local power, to the ruin and destruction of the common people. There were some too who thought that a foreign prince could do better in governing firmly and in a lasting manner, because he would not excite the same rivalry that a native sovereign might.

“This hypothesis had to be settled, if only to prevent future rivalry among the allied powers. The Emperor’s language on the subject was very plain. He declared through his minister of foreign affairs that neither his country nor his family had any ambitious aspirations in that way; that he did not aim at the conquest of Mexico; would not appropriate any of the sea-coast; would only seek the redress of grievances, and the security of his subjects. He asked the other governments if their intents were similar, and requested them to declare there were no special or personal interests in the expedition. Avowing this disinterestedness, he said, to avoid all rivalry among the allies, it would be well for them, in case they decided for a monarchy, to select a foreign prince for the new throne, and he suggested a prince who commanded the respect and esteem of everybody, on account of his noble qualities and the high sovereign family to which he belonged.”

Beware, gentlemen, of diplomatic language! The conversations, to which the minister of state alluded, happened previous to the treaty of London, on the 11th October, 1861; before the explanations made to the legislature the 14th of March, 1862, so that the denial of negotiations with Maximilian was useless, as the affair was then notorious. The truth was kept hid from us, for if we had been told that the Mexican expedition was intended to overthrow the republican institutions of that country and establish a monarchy there, I am sure your wisdom and patriotism would have prevented you from aiding the government in such an enterprise.

The government concealed the truth from you at first; it did not reveal its intentions to you; and though it pretended to act only in the interest of our citizens domiciled in Mexico, it had ulterior views. I do not hesitate to say that such conduct is condemned by justice and reason.

I am not now analyzing the Mexican expedition. I do not inquire into the conduct of the government; but its theory of the necessary triumph of the Latin races over the Anglo-Saxon, and the desire to establish our influence in an American republic, is certainly dangerous. I boldly assert that it is not right for a powerful nation that has armies and millions of money to dispose of—a nation respected by all Europe—merely because it has power and influence, to use that influence in a distant country, at the cost of a torrent of tears and blood, and impose the policy it thinks best upon an unfortunate country. We must learn that every race, wherever God has assembled a family called a nation, has the primordial right to govern itself according to its own inspirations, its manners and habits; and when others are imposed on it by force a law is violated, and the nation that does it ought to be blamed.

Now what strikes me in the result of this undertaking is, that what was begun was continued with deplorable perseverance: and what is stranger still, is that no official documents about the Mexican expedition have ever been published. And when we complained of it in this assembly we were told by the minister of state that he had no documents to publish; that the minister of foreign affairs kept a clerk to make extracts for publication, and we might get the documents from him.

We replied that if the country was thus governed it was to be lamented; but we were not much more inclined to believe the minister of state than his colleagues. I do not doubt the minister’s sincerity; I do not doubt his word; but he has often told us that state reasons, that superseded ordinary reasons, were against the publication of certain documents. That prompted him, most likely, to make the speech I have just severely criticised. But I am sure that no one in my hearing can believe that the minister did not see and read the documents mentioned.

The bulletins of our brave generals might have contained useful information for us. An intelligent officer, who notices what is occurring around him, can give a correct account of it, and we should have had their reports.

All is for the best, however; our armies advanced and were victorious, and what is more, they seemed to be well received by the people.

The prince left Europe in 1864, in spite of our representations, and you said he was welcomed as soon as he landed on the Mexican shore. It seems he was the Messiah of Mexico, anxiously expected by its inhabitants. He was kindly received by all, so how could there be any doubt about the success of his enterprise ?

I will not weary you by reading articles from the Moniteur, but I must read you a report of the proceedings on the 27th January, 1864. The unfortunate archduke was then at Miramar. He hesitated, but not for want of courage, as you well know; it was to obtain further information. He suspected the folly of an enterprise so uncertain. When told of the crimes of the Mexican government, of the anarchy that had reigned there for so many years, it naturally made him waver, while it paralyzed his resolutions.

It is not my place to say how his hesitation was overcome. History will chronicle that fact; but I must repeat what was then said by the minister of state in reply to M. Thiers, who foretold trouble for France, but would not allow her to abandon Maximilian, after placing him in such a delicate situation.

The honorable minister said: “No! God will lead him. This is not the first time I have heard prophets of evil. When we were besieging Puebla in May last, before the news of its fall had reached France, it was announced at Paris that supplies were giving out; that Puebla would resist, that the French forces would suffer another check, a new humiliation. The humiliation fell upon the false prophets.”

On the 11th of May he again said: “I do not fear to say that the emperor Maximilian has the future of the country in his hands. Let him be industrious and resolved, devoted to those principles of equality and liberty that form the true foundation of all democratic associations; let him wisely distribute the attributes of power between his government and the corps called to control it; let him use his power to give satisfaction to his country, and he will not fail to see his efforts crowned with success; to see a nation of new people, regenerated by his sceptre, grow and flourish under his rule.

“Yes, God will bless this conquest of civilization, and the people of Mexico, raised from their humiliation to true freedom, in a simultaneous burst of enthusiasm and gratitude will thank the emperor of Mexico and the Emperor of the French for their glorious regeneration.”

On the 13th May he said: “What ought to prejudice us, if such thoughts could occupy serious and exalted minds, are the necessary future conditions of a profound intimacy between Mexico and the United States of America. That country does not menace the emperor of Mexico, and he may continue in his efforts to repair the prosperity of the country, and get into such a condition that the French flag may he brought back in triumph to its home.”

Now, I ask every impartial man who hears me, when we know nothing about a matter, and we are constantly flattered with pompous expectations, if the government asks a vote of confidence from us, how can we refuse it ?

I have the right to say the government did not speak the truth, when the despatches received at the very time these remarks were making were calculated to compromise the country. Those despatches told that our soldiers were struggling amid danger, suffering from fatigue and privations; that when they had moistened a spot of ground with their blood, it belonged to them while they were on it, but as soon as they left the Mexicans returned to occupy it. It was a struggle hand to hand, not only under the walls of Puebla and in the city of Mexico, but in the distant provinces. Our poor soldiers were thus perishing uselessly upon a foreign soil, not for the interests of France, but for the honor of the Mexican monarchy.

This is the way you have been deceived; for you might have been told of the troubles in Mexico, instead of listening to untrue reports of ovations everywhere. What first proved that the enterprise was in despair was the conclusion of a secret treaty. This was after treacherous words had persuaded capitalists to invest their treasures in a foolish enterprise.

The secret treaty said: “It is possible, even probable, that the Mexican government may fail, and if it does the treaty is null.”

Is that the kind of loyalty that ought to exist between the government and a great assembly ? If that is so, I have the right to say that it is not only the want of control, but a want of truth, that caused the failure of the expedition.

[M. Favre is called to order by the president.]

I cannot express my thoughts in any other manner, when I am convinced that this house has been deceived, and it is my duty to say so. It was by such deception that this deplorable enterprise was conceived, in spite of the courage of our soldiers and the intrepidity of our generals, and was prosecuted with the fatal result that you have seen. Before closing I ask permission to say a few words about the last events of this lamentable affair, in which there was a cumulation of errors.

The Archduke Maximilian ascended the throne of Mexico in 1864 ; he soon saw the impossibilities of his situation, and it required no great prevision to see them; if he had sensibly consulted the people of the country, he could not have failed to see the delicacy of his situation.

When he found himself confronted by these difficulties, he attempted to overcome them with great energy, I must confess, and I will certainly say nothing now against the policy of the unfortunate victim; he has sealed the unlucky adventure with his blood, and he has become an object of respect for all.

It is impossible to slight the conduct of the French cabinet in the last events of the fatal expedition. As I said, Maximilian ascended the throne of Mexico in 1864, and in 1865 the French government saw that his cause was hopeless.

If time allowed, I could show you despatches to prove what I say. Maximilian’s treasury was exhausted in 1865, although two onerous loans had already been levied upou the French people, and he could neither pay his civil list nor his army, and the sad proof of it is in the accounts of our budget, for Marshal Bazaine was obliged to appropriate 5,000,000 for the payment of the Mexican and Austrian army, contrary to the provisions that consigned those expenses to the Mexican treasury.

Thus, in September, 1865, the French government regarded the cause as lost; for the conventions that Marshal Bazaine had concluded of his own accord were not authorized by the government. The government thought best to abide by the convention of Miramar, and if Maximilian could not pay that, it would be useless to spend all the money in France for him.

So, as early as 1865, the Mexican empire was considered lost.

No steps were taken to acknowledge it at that time; but the minister of foreign affairs considered it useless to give further aid to Maximilian. If we did we risked a war with the United States, and we did not wish to incur that danger. I do not say this to reproach the government; but I do reproach the government for continuing the military expedition in 1866, to help Maximilian out of his troubles, when it was altogether useless. I ask, when we knew that Maximilian’s empire was crumbling, why we did not lay aside all pride and selfishness, and attend solely to the situation of our soldiers and countrymen, who were about being exposed to retaliation and revenge from a people who have had cause for suspecting foreigners.

Why did we not make a treaty with whatever government existed in Mexico in 1866? We deceived ourselves, and rather than ackknowledge our mistake we attempted to create a fictitious existence for the unfortunate emperor whose end was evidently near at hand, who had himself begun to despair, and who was ready to leave the country. A vessel came to Vera Cruz to take him off. He was at Orizaba, and was not allowed to leave. Of course his only alternative was to return to Mexico.

Gentlemen, we have all been unanimous in the sentiment caused by the bloody scenes that have recently been witnessed in Mexico. When men murder each other in the fury of party spirit, they ought to be condemned in the name of reason and humanity.

It seems there is a law of terrible reprisals fatal to men whose hands have been dyed in blood. One thing necessary in these lamentable catastrophies is wisdom, another is coolness, and it seems to me our government has been wanting in both when it permitted publications in an official paper that might have a terrible echo abroad. When it invoked the divine right for the protection of thrones in favor of a stranger, condemning to infamy those who dared oppose him, let me tell you it was wrong, and I will say that the most obscure son of France who has perished abroad in devotion to duty is much more worthy of sympathy than any prince who in defending his crown——

(Interrupted by a call to order by the president.)

I do not think that political necessity can explain or excuse the conduct of the government in the latter part of the expedition.

The Archduke Maximilian had calmly started under the faith and solemn promises of our army to be protected by it and by France. Though the minister of state declared in this spot, speaking of the finances, that the Mexican empire was not connected with the fortunes of France, it is very certain they were intimate upon the battle-field; and I believe I am not the only person who has felt a profound regret that political combinations did not permit us to bring back the unfortunate archduke, and thus save France from the responsibility of blood that falls upon it. I have always protested in favor of the inviolability of the life of the creature that God has placed upon this earth.

I insisted upon the abolition of capital punishment, and if you had considered my proposal, our vote would have strangely shaken the consciences of the great men of this world.

(M. Favre here concluded.)

M. Rouher, minister of state. M. Favre wants to throw the responsibility of the assassination in Mexico upon the government of France. I must protest, in the greatest indignation, against such an allegation. Maximilian was murdered in base treachery. He was betrayed by one of his own contemptible Mexican generals while he slept, and, after some days of confinement, he was tried by a secret tribunal with closed doors and condemned to instant execution. Yes, Juarez assassinated the emperor, whom he had deceived and caused to be betrayed.

Such is the morality of the act you wish to throw upon the French government.

When the Emperor Napoleon sent one of his aids to Mexico, in 1866, it was not to advise Maximilian to remain there, as my colleague has alleged, but to quit Mexico at once. After that, who can blame the French government for what has taken place?

When we had decided to withdraw the French troops from Mexico we did all we could to persuade Maximilian to return with them; but he preferred to remain. I assure you we regretted that resolution most sincerely.

I will not have unjust reproaches thrown upon us; let them be given where they belong.

From M. Favre’s language you would suppose the emperor had restored the political scaffold, when it is precisely that government that expunged the death penalty in politics from our legislation. Have you forgotten that your predecessors passed such a law? If you allude to the attempt at murder on the opera steps, you confound assassination with political crimes. That was not a political crime; it was an attempt at assassination, and should have been tried as such.

(A proposal to adjourn was put to vote, and the chamber adjourned till the next day.)

B. LAGACHE, Phonographic Reporter.

[From the Moniteur Universal, the official journal of the French empire, Paris, Thursday, July 11, 1867, No 192, page 917-920.]

LegislatiVe Assembly, Wednesday, July 10, 1867.

M. Schneider presiding.

M. Rouher. minister of state and finance, speaks :

Gentlemen, in spite of the catastrophe, full of bitterness and grief, that has overwhelmed the Mexican enterprise, in spite of disappointed hopes, in spite of the fervent words that echoed from this tribune yesterday, the government remains convinced that the Mexican expedition was just, legitimate in its causes and in its design; therefore it does not consider the propriety of the discussion of this painful subject in this house. No, the government only wishes to find out the morality of the facts, to examine whether your control existed or not, to weigh the consequences and heed the instruction that maybe found in the history of the Mexican expedition. M. Thiers tried to prove that the only object of the expedition was to found an empire in Mexico. He declared the expedition had no chance of success; that it would have been stopped if the control of the public powers had been properly exercised.

M. Favre, in very vehement language, said the public powers had been consulted, but the government was wanting in veracity. The questions I intend to discuss are, the general truth of facts, and the sincerity of your control. Did the government do its duty, and what moral is to be deduced from the consequences ?

The first question that presents itself is this: What means should have been used ? How did the convention of 1861 intervene? Was it clearly understood by the contracting parties ?

If we are to believe M. Thiers, neither Spain nor England were in the confidence of the French government. If we hear M. Favre, Sprain seduced the imperial government, and the proposals to put Maximilian on the throne of Mexico originated in the cabinet of Madrid in 1860.

Both of these contradictory assertions are erroneous. Violence to our countrymen was the cause of the war; its object was to demand satisfaction: the avowed way was to take possession of the country.

After overthrowing Miramon Juarez returned to Mexico, in 1861.

We sent a minister plenipotentiary to Mexico to recognize Juarez and treat with his government. The first three months, from January to May. were spent in friendly arrangements. M. Dubois de Saligny signed a treaty with the state minister, Zarco, fixing the indemnity to our citizens.

On the 28th, April, 1861, our minister in Mexico wrote to our minister of foreign affairs as follows:

“In the state of anarchy, of social decomposition we may call it, in which we find this country, it is difficult to predict the turn of events. One thing is certain, it cannot rest in its statu quo.

“Everything indicates that we are approaching another revolution. If it happens, it will be absolutely necessary for us to have a material force on the Mexican coast,” sufficient to protect our interests in every case.”

On the 29th June he wrote again:

“Requisitions, forced loans, confiscations and exactions of all sorts prevail. Foreigners are not protected in person or property. The government of the Emperor, I hope, will see the necessity of giving me instructions and means to force respect to the interests and honor of France.”

On the 27th July another despatch comes from M. Saligny: He says, a law of the 17th July suspends instalments of foreign debts for two years, and increases the interior custom duties 100 per cent. He says the Juarez government seized $86,000 deposited in the Pawn Bank to our account.

“Sir Charles Wyke thinks as I do,” says he, “and we have agreed to break our relations with the Mexican government. The determination produces a profound sensation. The French citizens here are unanimous in their indignation against this government; all desire a prompt and exemplary punishment.”

So our relations with Juarez began in a friendly manner; a treaty was signed to insure respect to our people and government. In April, exactions recommenced; murders take place in the streets of Mexico; impunity is complete; it is no use to ask justice. Our government is informed that the interests of our countrymen are neglected, and a force must be sent to Vera Cruz to protect them. By the 29th June the horizon grows darker; the 27th July a sum of money belonging to our people is seized. At last our minister agrees with the English minister to break with the Mexican government.

Such, gentlemen, are the precedents of this question.

On the 28th September, 1861, M. Dubois de Saligny sends to our government a list of our citizens who were robbed, pillaged, and murdered in the last few months. In his despatch of 28th September, 1861, he asks that measures be taken to stop these outrages and compensate our citizens for their losses. The Spanish minister being expelled by Juarez, our minister and the English minister broke off relations with the government, and then the three powers had to come to some understanding.

I will read you the text of the convention of the 31st October: “His Majesty the Emperor of the French, her Majesty the Queen of Spain, and her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, being placed by the arbitrary and vexatious conduct of the Mexican authorities in the necessity of exacting from those authorities a more efficacious protection for the persons and property of their subjects, as well as the execution of obligations contracted towards them by the republic of Mexico, have agreed to conclude between themselves a convention for combined action, and have named as plenipotentiaries,” &c.

Could three enlightened and intelligent powers agree to forge grievances that did not exist ?

Let us refer again to the convention to learn its object:

“His Majesty the Emperor of the French, her Majesty the Queen of Spain, and her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, bind themselves, as soon as this conven tion is signed, to make provisions for sending a fleet and army to the coast of Mexico, the number to be hereafter determined, to seize and occupy the different forts and military posts of the Gulf coast.

“The commanders of the allied forces shall also be authorized to accomplish such other operations as may be judged most proper on the spot, to realize the end specified in the preamble of the present convention, and particularly to assure safety to resident foreigners.”

Did these forces expect to remain on the coast ? Let us see how many troops each country furnished. Spain gave 7,000 infantry, which were certainly not intended to hold the fort of San Juan de Ulloa; France gave a contingent of 3,000 men; and England, truly acting a naval part, put TOO men and 700 sailors on her contribution of ships. And you tell me this army did not intend to go as far as the city of Mexico ? Were these men to occupy only the ports ?

On the 11th of November, 1861, M. Thouvenel gives Admiral Jurien de la Graviere the following instructions:

“In case the government of Juarez refuses to treat, and retires inland, the allied powers will quit the coast, if they cannot have access to the government from that point, and the I region be unhealthy. With this view, a corps of land troops will furnish the allies the means of extending the circle of their operations. The government of the Emperor admits the necessity of marching inland as far as the city of Mexico, if the object of the expedition is not attained by remaining on the coast. Another reason for the advance may be an attack from some unexpected quarter.” Thus the commander-in-chief is told to march into the interior, even as far as the capital, if necessary.

Were these instructions communicated to England or Spain ? M. Flahaut in England, and M. Barrot, in Spain, received them at the same time with Admiral Graviere. Thus they became a common law to the expedition. Let us see what else.

As early as 1858 Mexican refugees offered the throne to the Archduke Maximilian. The same offers were renewed in 1859, without answer. These facts were known to the contracting powers. In the month of October, 1861, they noticed these advances. What was their decision ? They unanimously declared they had no idea of conquest, and to prove it the convention of 1861 stipulated that the motives of the expedition should be made known to the United States, and that power requested to join in the demand for the satisfaction of damages such as they had suffered. It was stipulated in the second place that no member of the royal or imperial families taking part in the convention of 1861’ should have any pretension to the throne of Mexico; and finally, it was understood that we were to impose no government on the Mexican people. The second article of the convention of 1861 says:

“The high contracting powers bind themselves not to take any territory or private property, and not to exercise any influence of a nature to prevent the Mexican nation from forming its own government.”

If a conflict between two governments had been intended, would such a clause have been thought of ? But there was already a government in Mexico; Juarez was at the head of it. But what kind of a government was it? We know the nation was tired of its yoke; that if freed from it, it would try for its independence; and hence the clause I have mentioned.

In his instructions to Admiral Graviere, of the 11th November, 1861, M. Thouvenel said :

“There are certain contingenoies that might induce the civilized portion of the people, who are tired of the anarchy that has prevailed since the emancipation, to try and form a stable government, with power to sustain itself, which has not been the case in any of the others. The allied powers have a common interest in seeing Mexico rise again from the desperate condition that has paralyzed her prosperity and her use to the world; and that interest ought to induce them not to discourage the people from attempting to form such a government as I have mentioned.”

This shows we did not intend to interefere in the formation of a new government in Mexico; but if the people tried to form a durable government we were to aid them morally. Such was the true situation.

From this we deduce that the London convention of the 31st October, 1861, was made to protect our countrymen in Mexico; its intention was to seek reparation for damages; the manner to accomplish that was to march to the capital of Mexico.

It was certainly a military expedition, because it was very probable the oppressed people would shake off their yoke and try to form a stable government, and we had been instructed to encourge them in the laudable undertaking. The documents from which I derive these facts have all been published, and were exhibited to this assembly at its first session in 1862, two months after the convention of the 31st October, 1861. You will find the convention and M. Dubois de Saligny’s despatches, the instructions to Admiral Jurien de la Graviere, and in fact all the documents I have quoted. in the yellow book of that time. The decree of the 24th November, 1860, was then in force: the chief of state made a speech at the time, exposing the situation of the empire, and you were called to vote and to deliberate upon an address.

Here is what was said about the situation at that time:

“Great Britain and Spain, that had claims against Mexico, joined us in our coercive measures to force Mexico to respect her engagement, and compel her to indemnify our citizens for spoliations that made their situation almost intolerable.

“A convention concluded in London the 31st October last, regulated combined action of the three powers. The allied squadrons have already united in the Gulf of Mexico, and the debarcation of our expeditionary forces must have proved by this time to our countrymen that the Emperor’s patience was exhausted, and their complaints would be heard.

“Though such is the sole object of the expedition, we would certainly be pleased if the three powers could induce Mexico to reorganize its government in such a way as to form one that would develop that magnificent country, and give it an independence and prosperity it has long needed,”

In this explanation of the situation, determining and characterizing the convention, we plainly said, that if a new, regular, and firm government could arise out of the salutary crisis to which Mexico would be exposed by its own votes, we would be much pleased.

M. Thiers seemed to think that Mexican affairs were first discussed here in 1864. He forgot the debates in 1862 and 1863, and the explanations then given. M. Favre recalled them when he said: “I acknowledge the control, but the minister who spoke for the government did not speak the exact truth.” M. Billault’s veracity was thus put in doubt. This accusation was necessary, though his tomb was so cruelly and prematurely opened. But the facts are as I give them.

The aim of the expedition was certain: the result uncertain. Nobody could say what would happen; no one could calculate the passions of the Mexican nation. Maximilian had not accepted; the allied powers had made no engagement with him in 1861 ; we had no official notice of his aspirations; we had reports of his negotiations, but nothing was certain. It was under these circumstances that M. Favre asked if the expedition was intended to place the Archduke Maximilian upon the throne of Mexico. This question was put on the 13th of March, 1862. M. Billauit answered in the negative. 1 will give you an extract from his speech of that day:

“Now, if in this conflict the unhappy people of the country, weary of the ills they have suffered for 40 years from alternating anarchy and tryranny should shake off the yoke of their oppressors, conquered by us; if, in a moment of good sense and instinct of self preservation they should attempt to form a regular free government, could we prevent them ? This case is precisely anticipated by the convention as well as by the instructions. We will exercise no force over the people. We will not violate a principle which is the basis of our public law, of popular will and national sovereignty in Mexico, but we will leave the miserable people free; a people who have been oppressed by governments that you praise, but which gave them none of the blessings, none of the securities that are the rights of civilized nations. If they wish to continue that miserable existence, we will not impose a better fate upon them; but if they seek a better condition we will encourage them with all our sympathy, our counsel, or moral support.

“Let the facts be as they may, a legitimate war, required by our honor and our interests, we will prosecute vigorously with our allies, with a hope that the miserable Mexicans, if they have enough energy and fraternity to accept a good government, may find one, and such a one as will give security to our countrymen. We will give them our counsel and our moral| support, but we will never force them to anything.

“You ask why we want to go to the city of Mexico; why not remain on the coast?

“Gentlemen, the topographic and hygienic situation of the country requires it as much as our policy does. To take possession of the sea-coast and remain there would be sacrificing our troops to the yellow-fever; it would frustrate our intentions; anarchy would rejoice, and the wretches would laugh at France. We must leave the yellow-fever behind and strike at the heart of the country, where we would meet an enemy less formidable than the fever, That is the only way to compel respect for our rights, respect for our people, and the execution of long standing obligations to our country. That is why our troops have gone to Mexico. They started the 20th of February, and ought to be there now.”

That is what was spoken on the 13th of March, 1862. So you see we wanted to go directly to the capital, where the offences against us were committed, and demand satisfaction for them.

Let us now see what was going on in the Gulf. The Spanish, English, and French had arrived. The yellow-fever broke out on the coast. I have the letter of General Prim to his government, written the 7th of February, 1862. He is impatient to march on Mexico; he is waiting for mules from Cuba to help him on; he declares that the banners of the allies shal soon wave over the capital of Mexico. How comes it there was such a change by the 19th of February ? How was it that the general-in-chief signed the preliminaries at Soledad on that day? These are questions I will not discuss. What were those preliminaries? They ignored the convention of 11th October, 1861, completely. In them it is stipulated that the government of Juarez shall thank the allies for coming to his aid, and in two months (the 15th of April) conferences shall be held to establish good relations between the Mexican government and the three allied powers. Thus two months are uselessly wasted. The allies are permitted to go to Orizaba and Cordova on condition that they return to the fever region if there is no agreement at the conference; and to mark these declarations with a sort of irony, it is agreed that the Mexican flag shall float over Vera Cruz and its fort with the colors of the allied powers. We rejected the convention of Soledad on the 2d of April, but affairs were completely changed before the news could cross the ocean.

The strategy was soon discovered by the men who had signed it. Impositions continued; our citizens were murdered in the streets of Mexico, and the Mexicans were fortifying themselves in Puebla.

The sole object of the convention of Soledad was to place our army between the Mexicans and the yellow fever, which generally began its ravages the last of April. Such was the situation. Count Reus (General Prim) perceived it on the 20th of March, and on the 21st he wrote to Mr. Saligny and Admiral Graviere as follows :

“We are betrayed; we cannot observe the preliminaries of Soledad. Our only alternative is to march on Mexico.”

This was before the Atlantic cable was laid, and news could not be conveyed rapidly between the two continents. On the 9th of April, Saligny and Graviere denounced the imprudent convention, and declared they would advance, asking the allies to accompany them, but determined to go alone if they would not join. So, on the 9th of April, the French army left the allies and began a single combat with the Mexicans. M. Thiers informs us there was an ultimatum at the time denouncing the extravagance of the French claims. The ultimatum was discussed by the plenipotentiaries and the convention of Soledad was rejected. In the ultimatum, England demanded 80,000,000 francs indemnity for her citizens, though they were not so numerous as our people in Mexico, and their commerce was certainly less extensive than ours. Spain demanded 40,000,000 France demanded 60,000,000.

M. Thiers said, “I think there is some exaggeration on the part of England; the claim of Spain seems more reasonable; but our claim is certainly exorbitant.”

I beg his pardon; there could be no agreement on this point without going into particulars, and that could not be done at the time. The entire claims of our citizens amounted to 156 millions; yet we agreed to submit to a compromise. In 1865 we came down to 40 millions, and that claim was ratified in 1866. It is added that we also demanded 75 millions more for the Jecker claim. No, gentlemen, we did not ask that in cash; we only asked a confirmation of the contract between Miramon and Jecker & Co., and the admission of those bonds as values to be received for customs. Jecker’s contract required the circulation of its bonds; that was all. This happened before the defeat at Puebla. M. Thiers says our mistake was there. After the capture of Puebla he says we ought to have suspended hostilities, and should not have marched on to the capital; or if we did, when we got there we should have treated with any government we found, and then brought our troops back.

Ah, gentlemen, it is very easy to say what should have been done after the failure of a plan.

What could we do after the capture of Puebla, when General Bazaine had advanced without meeting the enemy, and had already entered the city of Mexico ? Who was there to treat with? The government was in flight, and had left no minister to treat with us. Could we then treat with Juarez; place our citizens under his protection and demand their rights ? It was too late. I ridiculed the idea in 1864, and I repeat it now. Treat with such a man as Juarez ! No, never.

What were we to do then ? Quit Mexico without a treaty with any government ? Were we to return to France without any guarantee, after marching to the city where the outrages against us were committed?

We were compelled to some determination; did history furnish us no precedent of action ?

In 1848 United States troops were in Mexico, bargaining for the purchase of some provinces. Did they quit Mexico without assuring to the people some form of government ? No; while they occupied the capital a convention assembled and elected Herrera president of the republic.

Well, that is just what we intended to do. General Forey, according to instructions, called a convention of Mexicans to deliberate on the best form of government for them. M. Thiers told you yesterday they were all honorable men, the best of Mexican society. They decided that a monarchy was the best form of government for Mexico, and proposed that the throne should be offered to the Archduke Maximilian. Committees were appointed and registers were opened in every district free from oppression. An immense majority voted for the empire and Maximilian.

What influence had France in that result ? General Forey’s instructions were as follows: “Respect the independence of the Mexican nation; let it make a government to suit itself; exercise no influence upon the proceedings.” That is plain and definite. True, our soldiers were there, but they did not interfere in any way with the government makers.

Indeed, gentlemen, after forty years of anarchy, was it not time to hope for and try some new form of government ? It was done by the Mexicans themselves, and now you want to make us responsible for it; and now you tell us this choice made by the Mexican nation, without constraint, ought to have been prevented. You say the enterprise was foolish; that the people were not capable of a regular organization, and ought to be struck off the book of nations, because they could not live politically nor financially.

M. Thiers said the archduke ought to have been isolated the first day of his arrival on Mexican territory. He was confronted with a terrible question —that of the church property. If he solved it by the passions that surrounded him be was lost; if he solved it in wisdom he would be alone on Mexican soil. Then he said the fertility of the country was an illusion; its barrenness was proved by every document he had seen, and the organization of its finances was an impossibility. All the illusions on the subject could be refuted by any serious mind.

Now, let us consider all those arguments, and inquire why they were not made till after the sad events we now lament.

The question of church property was a hard one, but the solution adopted by the emperor Maximilian was impressed with wisdom, as M. Thiers himself says. He would not annul sales made to purchasers in good faith. On the day of his arrival in Mexico he marked the solution of that difficult question by saying, “All sales made in good faith, and where conveyances have been made to purchasers, shall be respected; only those subject to be annulled by the common law of the country, that is those that are simulated, shall be considered of no effect.”

Should the clergy have opposed that decision ? What was more wise, simple and reasonable than to accept it ?

What was wrong in Maximilian’s decision when he said to purchasers in good faith, “You will not be disturbed in your possessions;” and when he said to the clergy, “Moderate your excessive claims; accept a reasonable compromise, and don’t be carried away by prejudice; the solution I propose to you is stamped with the seal of wisdom?”

Yes, the emperor was right, because he had not calculated with human passion, but depended upon the reason of another; because he relied on the good sense of every one; and you say he attempted an impossibility. No, his was a wise decision, and if evil passions had not darkened the understandings of the inhabitants of that benighted land, he would have gained a great and legitimate popularity.

You say the poor country is not worth a government. I have read everything on Mexico; I have read all newspaper accounts of that country; the reports of our engineers, and there is not one that does not boast of the great fertility of that privileged soil; that does not represent it as yielding all the products of the north and south in its successive latitudes and varied altitudes. I have not read a work that does not boast of the exhaustless mineral wealth of that favored land. Its vicinity to California explains the importance of the silver, iron, and coal mines that exist in Sinaloa and Sonora. Are these illusions ?

Who knows when that mineral wealth will be dug from the earth? When the United States seize on Sonora, as they have seized California, then you will see that now barren land blossom as California does. Let the inhabitants, have a good government, with a stimulus to their energy and activity, and that sterile and misgoverned province will exhibit the same prodigy of prosperity that its more fortunate neighbor does.

So, gentlemen, you think we were mistaken; we violated all rules of reason and good sense when we attempted to organize a regular government for Mexico ?

Let us consider the financial condition of the country at that time. During the years just preceding our advent the custom-house revenues of the country amounted to 90 millions, Now, to raise 130 millions of francs, the appropriation fixed by Maximilian, it was only necessary to impose a tax of six francs a head. Was that impossible ? With the return of order in government, regularity in finances, industry in labor, was it a dream to hope that much? It could not be expected instantly, I confess. But what do all the experts who have been successively sent to Mexico tell us? One of them spoke in this house, (Mr. Corta.) Happy results, of course, could not be expected at once; public credit was to aid in founding the new empire. If the new nation could thus be supported for a few years, its resources would be sufficiently developed to pay its own expenses. That is what all reports, including Mr. Corta’s, induced us to believe; that is how the government believed it. Yes, we agreed to aid in the establishment of that empire; we sent our soldiers and our money there. Two loans were negotiated to furnish the means. What could we do? While our flag and army were in Mexico could we say the French market was closed to Mexican loans ?

We are told of a strange contradiction of the government. While the loan was approved by this house, it was a secret contract in another ministerial department, expressing a want of confidence in the loan.

There is a mistake in dates in this assertion. The first loan was made in April, 1865. The secret convention, which you say was made at the same time as the loan, was made six months after, on the 27th September, 1865. When the minister of finance fixed the bonds at 300 francs, did that show a want of confidence in the loan ?

Our confidence was perfect at that time, for we took a friend by the hand and said to him, “You are intelligent and strong; you are perfectly acquainted with our finances, and the great trouble in Mexico is want of funds. We want you to go there and regulate its finances, Quit the state council where you are so much beloved, where you are so much admired for the superiority of your talents, and go to Mexico to organize the finances of that country.” The friend whom we thus sent away from his native land to a distant and sickly: country, never returned to us, we never saw him again. (It was M. Langlais )

And you say our confidence began to fail then, in 1865 ? You may call our language illusory, our reasoning false, attack us in every way, mock our broken hopes, but do not say we did not act in good faith, that the sincerity of our conscience was not spoken here.

M. Favre said to you they knew the situation; Marshal Bazaine was obliged to anticipate receipts of Mexican cashiers; the Mexican government had no funds, and we had to resort to extraordinary means for funds to meet our engagements.

Here is another error of date and judgment. The events mentioned by M. Favre happened in May and June, 1866, and under circumstances entirely different from those of 1865, when the loan was contracted, and the agreement between the minister of finance and the director of the discount bank was made. They happened, I say, in May and June, 1865, after the return of our troops had been decided on, and when events then occurring in Mexico called for a fresh sacrifice from the French treasury.

I return to the opinions expressed by Mr. Thiers and Mr. Favre. One said your control was not exercised; the other said it was exercised, but its effect was annulled by prevarication. You see this is intended to throw the responsibility of the expedition upon the government, and place the majority of this house beyond the reach of any responsibility. I am not afraid to say that argument has neither truth nor justice. In your devotion, loyalty, and patriotism you will reject it and join us in a common cause of mortification. The control was complete, and facts were explained in the greatest sincerity.

Three times during the year 1863 did this house debate the call for means; it was discussed again in 1864, before and after the convention of Miramar. In 1865 and 1866 all the facts were laid before you and explained in great sincerity. We failed; it was our misfortune, but not the result of the want of earnestness on our part.

I repeat it: we told everything—nothing but the truth; if we have failed, throw the responsibility upon us; but do not accuse us of untruth. Do you not believe the official bulletins published in the Moniteur ? Were they not the exact reproduction of the documents sent by our generals and our marshals?

Unfortunately, at the close of the year 1865 events became cruelly complicated. I will not go into particulars, but I must say that agitation on the Rio Grande, repeated violation of neutrality by American fillibusters, and the encouragement of rebels by America, obliged Marshal Bazaine to concentrate his army so as to be ready to use it in any emergency.

From that day the Mexican army has had to fight the dissidents who were encouraged by people beyond the Rio Grande; and from that time the Mexican finances have not been able to meet their increasing obligations.

It has been our duty to examine the situation thoroughly. Why was it necessary to remain in Mexico after 1866 ? We could not expect the execution of the treaty of Miramar, the payment of the sums therein promised; so the French treasury would have to pay for the continued occupation of Mexico. That would have been a costly imposition upon France. We would have had to pay and feed the whole Mexican army, the Belgian legion, the Austrian legion, take the direction of the military affairs of that government, direct its finances, and then ask this house for a credit of 80,000,000 at least. This state of affairs irritated public opinion. Our people are restive and impatient.

We had been in Mexico 18 months; nothing had been gained; prospects were not flattering; and the return of our soldiers was urged. What could we do?

Gentlemen, if we had been under that despotic government which the opposition say we have, it would have persisted in the work, and said to you: “I will establish an empire in Mexico; I will support it with my troops; will run all the risks of the perilous situation.” But no, it did no such thing. I don’t know how ministerial councils used to act, but I know how ours acted on this important question of Mexico. We discussed it sadly and solemnly, consulting public opinion, and at last determined on evacuation. But I do not hesitate to say, if I could have looked into the future to see the abominable assassination that has just been perpetrated, I should have refused my assent to the withdrawal of our troops.

However, the evacuation of Mexico was determined on, as urged by public opinion, in view of the principle that the chief of state, elected by popular will, is obliged to obey the mandates of popular sovereignty. The order for evacuation was issued on the 14th January, 1866.

Was it a hasty retreat from the victorious bands of Juarez ? No Frenchman will acknowledge it. Our soldiers did not fear the rabble that followed Juarez and Diaz; we were not retreating from them.

Baron Saillard went to Mexico to study the situation. He found the sacrifices would be too great for us; for we had to pay for the Mexican army as well as for our own. We tried to put off the time fixed for the departure of our troops. At first we arranged three periods. so as to consolidate, if possible, the tottering throne we had attempted to set up; but when distress and want began, when we knew the power must come to an end, we sent an aid of the Emperor, a man of superior mind, to implore Maximilian not to remain in Mexico, but to quit a country where he had already suffered so much.

Maximilian would not take our advice, and I just read in a public paper the motives that determined him not to return to Europe. I will read the article to you as a consolation in your great affliction. In a letter of the 27th September. 1866, to his minister, Marques Corio, in Brussels, he said:

“France looks to its own interests in withdrawing its troops; I have no interests to care for; and, so long as the Mexican nation adheres to its vow, I cannot and will not abandon a cause I have accepted with its risks. Happen what may, I need not tell you I will be what I was in Milan, in the navy, and at Miramar. I will follow the counsel of my duty and my personal dignity; I will never abandon my post; I will never forget, for a single moment, that I descend from a race that has gone through trials harder than mine; and the glory of my ancestral name shall never be tarnished by my conduct.”

These are noble words, that make a giant of the victim before the pigmy assassin who claims to be victor. I will mention that sad event no more; I will examine M. Thiers’s arguments in brief, and then conclude.

You were told that “the Mexican expedition was paralyzing France, when great events were occurring in Germany. The failure of that expedition has destroyed our commerce in those distant seas.” The minister of stare told you “trade with that portion of the western continent was one of the chief motives of the expedition.”

No, gentlemen, that expedition did not influence our government in its action towards Germany. No, our strength was not paralyzed by the loss of those 22,000 men and 20,000,000 of francs employed in Mexico. If the country’s honor had been concerned in the German question it could have been settled without our troops in Germany. No, French commerce. has not been ruined in the New World. A few years ago I spoke of the great commercial interests we ought to have in Central and South America; and I gave you its sum, with Brazil, Chili, and La Plata. I was repeating what I had heard from M Thiers himself, when he told our government that not one Frenchman should be touched in those distant countries without calling the forces of the entire French nation to avenge the insult. M. Thiers understood that commerce was never confined long to one single spot: hence the necessity to look over all America to judge of the importance of our commercial situation. He was right; we must revenge, protect, and sustain our countrymen always and everywhere, without regard to sacrifices. The interests of French commerce, all the industry, prosperity, and power of France depend on those conditions.

I say that the influence of France has not been injured by the Mexican expedition. Our flag has not been insulted once during the four years’ occupation of Mexico. We marched over much of that immense territory in weak, detachments, meeting the enemy in superior numbers everywhere, and in a hundred fights we were the conquerors of those brutal bandits.

Central America and South America saw that courage and supreme devotion, and it will teach them the power of our troops. When they saw us leave the shores of Mexico they knew We were leaving with all our strength and all our greatness. Those that dared to insult us for an instant kept away from our soldiers till the last one had quitted Vera Cruz. Yes, the French flag is still respected and revered in the republics of the south, and our commerce will continue to prosper there.

Now what is the lesson taught by this expedition? We have failed. Was that proof wanting to establish human fallibility, to show that the just are not always successful, that the best combinations formed by man often fail, that Providence, for some reason inscrutable to us, often delays justice and punishment for misdeeds and crimes ?

Yes, we failed in a grand undertaking; there was nothing mean, little, or selfish in it. Did we go for territorial extension? Did we try to set up a prince of the imperial family? Did we dream of conquest ? No; we had none of those designs; our thought was to restore a broken nation to integrity and civilization; we thought to put down anarchy, establish order, and make a rich, prosperous, industrious, and trading neighbor for the United States of the north, that must now regret its shameful conduct in this affair.

Are we to be blamed for wishing all that good? Shame on the nation, rather, that prevented it! What would have been said had we succeeded ? We would have earned the gratitude of posterity for restoring that nation to civilization, from constant civil war and perpetual anarchy.

God did not will it; let us respect his decrees. If we had gone against a quiet country of industrious people, it would have been different; but we went to Mexico, where anarchy and disorder prevailed; and we left it filled with crimes from unexpected victories.

Some applaud our defeat and triumph at our return.

I will say but one word more. I do not wish to leave the stain of disgrace upon the Mexican nation. No, nations do not perish. God does not consign them to perpetual expiation. Order will again prevail in that land, and the innocent blood that has been shed will be avenged. I cannot say when that day will come, but I pray for its arrival, with all the fervor of encouraged hope. I cannot say when that nation will regenerate into civilization; but the day when it is free it will look back upon its history, and in the enthusiasm of its deliverance, it will give a shout of sympathy and gratitude for France.

(The minister took his seat amid prolonged applause from every side, and received the congratulation of many members. A recess of twenty minutes then followed, alter which M. Jules Favre took the floor.)

Gentlemen, (said M. Favre,) if this serious discussion was confined to the result of a sad event, it would be unnecessary to continue it; but as the orator who has preceded me says, its aim is higher. We are considering, not so much a lamentable check as a system that has caused it. The minister denies the responsibility of the government, for the very reason that its policy originated the expedition. He said it was just, legitimate, well conceived, bravely prosecuted, wisely directed. I ask then, why did it fail ? Now, gentlemen, I wish to examine the assertions just presented in the name of the government. I said the reasons given by the minister would have made the success of the expedition certain: but, I say, any prudent, reflecting man could have seen its failure from the beginning. The minister will agree with me, that it is a serious business to govern a nation; to be responsible for its destiny, is to accept one of the greatest duties on earth; and when the ruler of a nation spends 700 millions for nothing, and sacrifices the lives of many thousands of Frenchmen to no profit, his advocate should not come here and proclaim it a mistake, and say the best of men are liable to mistakes, to err is human, and no one is infallible. When ministers place themselves above human frailties, when they call upon you to place entire confidence in them, to believe them upon their word, when they ask for votes without giving a reason, I say it is too much.

I have said, and I still maintain, that we were not sufficiently enlightened upon the real intention of the Mexican expedition; if we had, we never would have consented to it.

The minister said its only end was satisfaction for damages to our countrymen; that there was no concealment, everything was done openly. I still contend that when the Mexican expedition was announced to us in 1862, we knew nothing about its precedents, they had been sedulously kept from us.

Did we ask the government on the 14th March, 1862, what negotiations had been opened with the court of Austria ? The minister of state has confessed there were such negotiations. Were they denied by the government organs ?

It is my duty to mention these preliminaries to show that the whole truth was concealed from us in the beginning.

This prevarication fixes the moral responsibility of the expedition upon the government.

We now hear that as early as 1858 there were diplomatic conversations on the subject between the cabinets of Paris and Madrid.

My assertions are founded on official despatches anterior to 1861, from Thouvenel and Barrot, and were not forged for this discussion. These despatches speak of the question of restoring monarchy to Mexico, discussed between the court of France and Spain at that time.

This is the truth; negotiations were opened previous to 1860 upon that question, and they were not made known to this house. If they had been, we would certainly have forbid the arms of France to join any foreign combination.

So those negotiations existed in 1862, and they were denied.

After simple diplomatic conversations came despatches and a treaty, which has been spoken of. That was in 1861. The treaty contained reservations, which I will point out. They will show that the government undertook, upon its sovereign will, to accomplish an enterprise which was most certainly premeditated, but of which this house and the country knew nothing.

The convention in question was concluded between the three powers in November, 1861, and it contained a clause anticipating defeat. Such an eventuality is not new in the history of nations. The words were: “It is possible that when the French forces land upon the Mexican coast, the sensible portion of the population, weary of anarchy, may initiate a movement to inaugurate a new government, and call upon our forces for assistance,” Such a language is insulting to patriotism. The sensible portion of no nation goes to meet the invading stranger. If my country were oppressed by a detestable government, and strangers were to appear on the frontier with the pretext of delivering us from the oppression of that government, I would be the first to shed my blood in defence of my country.

That treaty gave unlimited power to the commander of the French expedition, and the minister of state omitted to tell you what had been done in Mexico to make the chief of the expedition believe that the sensible portion of the people would throng round his colors.

The expedition left France in December, 1861, and reached Mexico in 1862. I was astonished to hear the minister of state say just now that the only way to obtain satisfaction for our wrongs was to go directly to the city of Mexico. If this is so, it weighs heavily upon the responsibility of the government, for it was not only contrary to the law of nations, but contrary to all the interests of France.

Our expeditionary force consisted of 3,000 men at first. I cannot imagine why such a magnificent enterprise was intrusted to such a small body of men. Advocates of the government say that the small number of men shows that conquest was not intended, that no idea of war was entertained. And those 3,000 men were sent to Mexico without provisions, without means of transport, which had to be brought from the United States. And could such a small number of men in such a condition be sent so far to redress the wrongs of our countrymen ?

(A voice says: We only sent 2,000 men to China.)

The minister said the original intention was to march into the interior of Mexico, hut the small preparation made for it contradicts his assertion. But that is not all; we have official documents to show that such was not the original design of the policy then in vogue.

When our forces joined the Spaniards the convention of Soledad was concluded, allowing the allies to go inland as far as Orizaba, to camp there. This refutes the accusation of strategy or treachery on the part of the Mexicans, for they invited us out of a sickly place to protection in a healthy region.

The minister says our agents would not have been received, and the convention could not have been accepted.

I do not dispute that point; but I must collate with that assertion the ultimatum, so often mentioned. That document, presented by the French plenipotentiaries, was a question of money, reducing the satisfaction for wrongs to a bargain; which, if it had been accepted by the Mexican government, would have avoided every cause of war.

That ultimatum demanded a sum of 60,000,000 for our countrymen and 75,000,000 for the Jecker bonds, and the execution of the Jecker contract. It is something new to see diplomatists, agents of a great power, undertake the execution of a contract between a foreign government and a private individual, and that contract a usurious one. It was on account of that very contract that England and Spain quit us, declaring they could not assent to such frauds.

Now I wish to call the attention of the house to this clause of the ultimatum, inserted just after the conditions mentioned:

“In guarantee for the accomplishment of the financial conditions and others laid down by this ultimatum, France shall have the right to occupy the ports of Vera Cruz and Tampico, and such other ports of the republic it may think proper, and to establish commissaries, named by the imperial government, in them, whose duty shall be to collect the revenues of those ports, for the powers interested, in execution of foreign conventions concerning the returns of the maritime custom-houses of Mexico, and to place in the hands of French agents all sums due to France.”

We cannot agree with the minister of state in saying the ultimatum had no meaning. It was intrusted to our agents by the minister of foreign affairs. The amount was in blank, and the minister, in a despatch of the 28th February, 1862, said: “The department does not fix our claim so high as it was in the first article, but, for want of data, great scope is left you.”

On the question of the Jecker bonds there is great latitude left to the French agent also. Those bonds were so cared for by the party that undertook the expedition that they are now the only ones that are worth anything.

A convention was concluded allowing Jecker 26,000,000. It was approved by the French minister, and bears the signature of M. Montholon. Half of that 26,000,000 was paid. Jecker received 13,000,000, and our people are still waiting for their portion of the debt.

When our lamented friend and esteemed colleague, M. Langlais, went to Mexico to regulate the finances of the new government there, he opposed the execution of the scandalous contract, and actually prevented the payment of the second part of the 26,000,000; and only 13,000,000 were paid, through the generosity of the French agent.

(The minister asks permission to make a correction.)

M. Rouher. M. Favre makes a material mistake. A convention was made in April, 1865, and signed by M. Montholon. In the Jecker affair, that convention reduced it 60 per cent. The 40 per cent, remaining was to be paid at the rate of 1,000,000 per year, without interest, and by adjudication. The convention was never executed. It was about the convention of 1865 that the minister of finance wrote as follows to the minister of foreign affairs, on the 14th October: “Letters just received from Mexico speak of new negotiations opened to liquidate that debt. I don’t know what arrangements have been made, but the Mexican government has given drafts for 12,660,000 francs upon the Mexican finance committee in Paris, payable to M. Jecker’s order. The sum is actually more than the amount of the last loan. I am surprised that such conventions act without the consent of the French minister in Mexico. I do not like them. They will absorb all the funds obtained by loans, which, I think, could be appropriated with greater profit to the Mexican empire.”

I have also the letter of the minister of foreign affairs to M. Dano, in which we protest against the convention, and thus prevented its further execution.

The French government had nothing to do with the last incidents of that affair, and as soon as they were known they were condemned and their execution countermanded.

M. Jules Favre (continues.) The minister of state informs you that the French government would not allow its agents to interfere in that negotiation, and yet we find M. Montholon’s signature to the paper; and it is upon that “signature that Jecker got the pay he received. I was right, then, when I said the Jecker stipulation in the convention was one of the causes of breaking off negotiations between Mexico and France. If Mexico had accepted the amount fixed for the French claims and the 12,000,000, if it had agreed to execute the Jecker contract, there would have been no expedition—there would have been no war; Mexico would have put France in possession of one of the ports mentioned in the ultimatum.

What now becomes of the grand idea of going to Mexico expressly to put an end to anarchy in that republic? The minister of state said there was no other way to obtain satisfaction for our wrongs. I have just shown you there was another way—that laid down in the ultimatum. But I say you were secretly determined, in spite of negotiations, to invade Mexico with force and arms, and to establish there the government you had already agreed on. I still insist that there was a reserve in the convention of 1861, which was, that if a portion of the population favored the expedition, their votes were to be taken. We promised to resort to force in no emergency. Who can say we kept our promise ?

Yes, force was the sole agent that favored the enterprise.

You mentioned 5,000,000 of votes for the empire. Where are the proofs? You have never shown us the vouchers. It was an impossibility—such a number of votes. The votes of 215 Mexican notables, assembled in the capital, under the protection of our flag, to vote for the unfortunate Archduke Maximilian, represent the millions of votes you speak of.

And where are the precedents that authorized you to use the reserves contained in the convention of 1861 ? This is one of the most terrible powers that could be confided to a government; it is the power of making peace or war—the power of engaging the country in undertakings in which its treasures and its blood are to be sacrificed.

If it had been thought possible to follow the will of the Mexican people, in conformity to the convention of 1861, when you had nothing to depend on but French soldiers and their bayonets, where was the pretext for remaining ? That is what you have never revealed; for the sword pierced the convention of 1861, and by the sword you marched on to the city of Mexico, where nobody called you. When the allies found the French resolved on that step they withdrew.

You mentioned General Prim, Count Reus; do you remember the letter he wrote to Admiral Graviere, in which he said, “The act of carrying the political refugees into the interior of the country, to organize a conspiracy there against the actual government and existing political system, when you advance as friends and propose conferences, has no example “?

The act was not only contrary to the law of nations, but was contrary to the convention of 1861, behind which you take refuge. There was no reason or pretext for your conduct. Our flag was to shelter refugees and lead them on to the gratification of their personal ambition; and it was in their service that the treasure and blood of France were spilled. Well, when you found out the real wishes of the Mexicans, were you not astonished ? Shall I recall the proclamation in which you told our soldiers they would be welcomed joyously to Mexico ? What a sad disappointment awaited them !

In debating the address in 1863, after our soldiers had received their first check and had to fall back, I said it would be well to consult the people and treat with their commanders. The expression of such an opinion was unpopular; but I prefer truth to popularity. And this is an eternal truth: no nation has the right to shed innocent blood to avenge its honor.

You insisted on marching directly to the city of Mexico. You wanted, no doubt, to inscribe the history of new victories on the pages of our annals, forgetting that unjust conquests always have sad reverses However you went to Mexico and set up a government that had no chance of existence; while we said to you: better remain where you are till you find out the true feelings of the inhabitants.

Unfortunately it is in 1864 that the Archduke Maximilian arrives in Mexico with his troops. He is crowned, and the assembly of notables crowd around him. Then, gentlemen, all was said, and France ought to have retired from her warlike undertaking.

What was the constant thought of the government ? It was to consider the people hostile to the emperor Maximilian, and of course as enemies to France; to battle them in their retrenchments, to use the money and soldiers of France to drive them into the extreme northern provinces of Mexico, and to destroy every shadow of resistance. It is here that the responsibility of the government is deeply involved; as the trustee of our power and resources it had no right to waste our blood and treasure in a foreign cause.

If Maximilian was the choice of the people, as you said, supported by the notables of Mexico and 5,000,000 of votes, he had no need of our assistance. But you know it was not true when you repeated it from this tribune, and you did it to get the subsidy of men and money you were asking, and I reproach you for that kind of deception. I demonstrated to you yesterday that you might have foreseen failure so early as 1865. There is the diplomatic correspondence to prove it, and it is certain there could be no doubt of it then. Yet at that time the Moniteur continued to report the enterprise as prospering; to assert that the throne of Maximilian was firmly fixed, and we had not the least cause of anxiety. But when I complained that no authentic evidence of these facts were given us, that no official documents were exhibited, the minister replied there were none, or at least he knew of none. I know he denies using the language I attribute to him; but the Moniteur exists, and the minister of state takes care to have his printed speeches distributed among us, and we always read them with great pleasure, even after we have listened to them here in this house. Here is an extract from a speech of his, made in August, 1865: “You can refer to all those events; there is not a break or an omission in them; and when I want to find anything relating to Mexican affairs I go to the Moniteur.”

I cannot say if the minister of state agrees with the speaker of 1866; I find a contradiction, and believe my language yesterday was just. I had a right to complain that official papers were not published, for the house ought to know everything that takes place in such an enterprise. We seemed satisfied with articles in the Moniteur, and pleased with the pompous declarations of ministerial discourses; but were those declarations consistent with the dignity of France and the government ? How could they be, when the minister said in the same speech: “The end must be attained: the pacification roust be complete; the dignity of France and of the Emperor demand it. The French army must not return to our shores till its task is accomplished and it has triumphed over every resistance.”

Was that plan of the minister of state carried out 1 Was the task finished ? Was Maximilian firmly fixed upon his throne ? Did the French forces return in triumph ? I have any number of ministerial despatches, all containing the same language. They all say France must not abandon Maximilian, and leave the task unfinished. And yet the failure of the expedition was complete. And the minister tells you France’s influence is not injured. I ask him to reconcile the catastrophe of this lamentable drama with the words he uttered in 1866. That pompous eloquence meant nothing, or it had a political meaning; if the latter, how is it that the French army has come back and left our countrymen defenceless, trusting foreign legations to care for them ?

In apolitical point of view the government was responsible, not only for the safety and honor of France, but for its resources and blood; and to waste them was a crime; and to use them in a lost cause was a fault that weighs heavily upon the responsibility of government. The dream is over now.

But you were not satisfied with making war on Mexico; you wanted to weaken America. But the sad result of the expedition has served to strengthen the country you wanted to destroy. In fact, the last word of your false policy is the confession that the final object of the Mexican expedition was to throw the great country you were pretending to save from anarchy, into the hands of America.

The severity of official language ought never to extend to epithets against a government you could not hurt. I find this in the Moniteur: “Mexico may consider itself lucky to disappear from the number of nations and be absorbed by its powerful neighbor.”

So, political documents that I can produce prove that the result of the expedition is to swell that American power you dread so much, and which you would prefer to see diminished. When you weakened the French finances, when you shed French blood that ought to weigh upon your consciences—and in a free country you would be legally and criminally prosecuted for it——[Those who talk for Juarez ought to be tried for life, said a voice. The president interrupts. M. Favre, you ought to know that pomposity shows the weakness of a cause.]

M. Favre continues: You advise me to be more moderate. Is that freedom of speech ? Is it a specimen of liberty when the president mutilates the columns of the Moniteur that ought to produce our speeches entire ? [Great noise and confusion in the house, M, Favre takes his seat. M. Thiers asks permission to make a few remarks.]

M. Thiers: My first remark will be about the origin of the expedition. My second will relate to its finances, which are not as you represent them. In regard to the origin of the expedition, I will say that Spain and England agreed with us perfectly on the justice of the enterprise, and were not satisfied with simple satisfaction for damages. I can produce the orders of the English and Spanish governments forbidding their troops to march to the capital, and their agents to interfere in any way in the internal government of Mexico; and I also have a letter from Admiral Graviere to General Prim, at the time of the rupture, stating that the French intended to march to the city of Mexico for the purpose of establishing a monarchy there.

The sum of the expedition is this: Our claims against Mexico were used as a pretext for converting the first operation into a second, that had nothing in common with the first, which our allies could not consent to, and which was the sole cause of our rupture.

The object of the second operation was to set up a monarchy in Mexico, for which we made very many sacrifices.

I contend that the finances have not been properly represented here. I can prove that the cost of that expedition to France was not 300,000,000, but 600,000,000, double the sum. And add the cost of loans to that and we will have 300,000,000 more. Thus, in my profound conviction, more than 600,000,000 have been spent by France, and the 300,000,000 from the loans being added we have the cost of the expedition to be 900,000,000 from the treasury, or furnished by a few French bankers, who are now much to be pitied. [Many voices for adjournment. M. Emile Allivier asks to make a few remarks against adjourning now. He is permitted to speak.]

We are now in general debate. Other questions might arise, and I wanted this opportunity to say a few words on the internal situation. I move to put off the debate till to-morrow.

The vote on adjournment is put and carried.

BON-EURE LAGACHE, Chief Reporter,

[From the Journal des Débats, Paris, Vendredi, July 5, 1867.—Translation.]

Annexed to Mr. Romero’s letter of July 27, 1867

If we had been able hitherto to entertain any doubt about the fate of the emperor Maximilian, there has been none for a long time about the definite collapse of the Mexican empire, and it is with that we wish to busy ourselves at present. Now on this point the government journals seem to us to be in danger of committing a gross blunder. Using that system of tactics which consists in taking the offensive when one foresees an attack, they assail the opposition for the disastrous issue of the expedition to Mexico.

Unhappily the cause is not defensible; it was bad from the start. It would have been much better to follow the example of the dead prince, and frankly acknowledge a great error, than to attempt to justify that which is unjustifiable. What man in his senses can they convince that this sad abortion of a transatlantic crusade has fallen only under the blows of an imperceptible minority in the French legislature ? Was not the majority there ? Did it not vote everything that was asked of it ? Has it ever refused anything ? The truth is that, even while voting, the majority was opposed to this adventure; public opinion was solidly against it. It is this current of opinion which was not apprehended this time, as it had been in former circumstances.

If, for example, the Italian war had been previously put to vote in the chambers, it is certain that it would not have been voted; and yet, when the Emperor set out, he was carried in the arms of the people to the Lyons depot. He knew and felt that he was carried on the great popular sentiment; while from the beginning this Mexican affair has been an enterprise without visible reasons, incomprehensible by the mass of the people—a paradox inaccessible to the popular intelligence. This expedition could only have had any sense in the case that it had been accompanied by an intervention in the American civil war; and the men who urged the adventure were very logical in allying it to the cause of the south and of slavery. For this reason we have profoundly admired the simplicity with which a venerable senator said the other day that if the triumph of the Mexicans was soiled by cruelties, the United States would be responsible.

With all deference, that is to singularly misplace the responsibility. The United States have done what they could to make the rights of humanity respected. As to their having also done all which they could to hasten the downfall of the new Mexican empire, it would be too strange to attempt to make that a crime, and to reproach them for having wished the failure of an enterprise officially directed against them, and commenced at the very moment of their gravest domestic peril. If, to suppose a case, some country at our gates, living under our influence, gravitating in our orbit, and regarded by us as a future possession, were Invaded by an American army, arriving with the programme of erecting an Anglo-Saxon dike, to arrest the invasion of the Latin race, we should like to know with what eye that Latin race would regard that expedition, and whether it would think itself obliged to salute it with its good washes. The American republic had a right to regard the Mexican enterprise as a direct attack upon her, almost as direct as an armed intervention in favor of the southern rebellion would have been.

If nothing had been proposed in going to Mexico but to exercise legitimate reprisals, to punish exactions, to chastise acts of brigandage, that was a common right which appertained to all nations, and the use of which the United States were obliged to respect. But it was preferred to aggrandize the question, and to give it all the dress of a principle and of a theory. That is why England, who has little liking for theories, got out of the affair when she saw that it meant not the repression of Mexican piracy, but the restoration of the supremacy of the Latin race with the elements which you knew, and to make a crusade against America. Still, we ought to think ourselves lucky that the influences which brought about the Mexican expedition did not succeed in causing the commission of the corresponding fault, the intervention in favor of the south, which would have been more than a fault. At that time they counted on the triumph of the southern armies, on the rupture of the great federation, on the creation of a new state which would have served as a breastwork, and even as a support of the Mexican empire. All these dreams tumbled in pieces with the establishment of the Union and the reconstruction of the United States. From that day the fate of the new empire was fixed.

We have pronounced the word crusade; it is more exact than is generally supposed.

The party which was most urgent for the founding of the Mexican empire wished to make of it an instrument of theocratic restoration. The republican government of Mexico had become, they said, the spoiler of the church; it was confiscating or pillaging the goods of the clergy. The church, in her turn, agitated in Europe; she set in motion her powerful and manifold influences; and it is in this way that an expedition which should have been nothing but an act of police was turned into a religious and monarchic campaign. They found to erect the throne the arm of France; to fill it, they found a young prince belonging to a sovereign house, the cause of which was intimately bound up with that of the Papacy, and which had given to the church, in the concordat, irrevocable pledges. The young archduke, the future emperor, going to accomplish his new and fatal destinies, passed through Rome, and there took engagements with the violation of which he was afterwards to be bitterly reproached. Arrived in Mexico he was forced to open his eyes and to see what elements he had under his hands, and he tried to cure an incurable country by introducing into it European law— French law. Thence a complete rupture with the party which had summoned him. All Europe has resounded with the outcries of the Mexican clergy, the complaints of the archbishops, the censures of the Papacy: it has witnessed this heart-breaking and terrible drama of a young wife alarming the sacred residence by her mental agony.

To comprehend clearly the true history of the empire of Maximilian it is necessary to follow it in the religious journals—especially in those which can speak freely. The Catholique, of Brussels, lately published an article, in which we read as follows :

[The article is here cited in full. Its substance is, that if the result of the Mexican expedition has disappointed Europe, Maximilian’s course from the first has disappointed Catholics; that the church had given him her confidence on two grounds, his Austrian nativity and his conferences, before setting out, with the Holy Father; that her disappointment in him is due to three influences: that of Louis Napoleon, that of his Belgian wife, and that of his early residence in Venice, where he imbibed liberal views; that all these influences worked against the church, but especially the second; that Maximilian yielded, alienated the church party, failed to conciliate the liberals, and was regarded in Mexico merely as the representative of a foreign invasion; that his apparent deference to the French generals, and the fact that be was childless, told heavily against him; finally, that the expedition did not succeed because it did not have the blessing of God, and because the policy which had undertaken to protect it was not able to keep its promise.]

We have thought it necessary to cite this article at length, because it very clearly exposes the first causes of the expedition and those of its end. The conservative and catholic party appears to us to have also committed in this circumstance a double error. The first is in having believed that any one could reorganize a people with elements in decomposition, and a church whose clergy even that of Sicily, already the fright of Rome, does not approach. The second error is the same which has already been committed in the Roman occupation; it is in having believed that the France of to-day, revolutionary France, France made over by ‘89, could be the instrument of reaction (counter-revolution) and theocracy in the world. It is not a marshal’s baton, it is the code Napoléon which the French soldier carries everywhere in his cartridge-box. The Mexican business is a new and striking demonstration of it. It was thought that in this poor young prince there had been found an instrument of ecclesiastical restoration; he was of the house the most devoted to the Holy See; he received instructions at Rome; he promised the Austrian concordat—that concordat which produced Sadowa— and, barely arrived and installed under the protection of French arms, he found nothing else to do but to promulgate the French civil code, and to decree the secularization of goods held by mortmain, just as the eldest son of the church has done, just as catholic Spain has done, just as Italy is doing.

It is in vain that any one tries to resist the spirit of the times.

And what remains to-day from this sad experiment ? The country, which it was wished to regenerate, behold it plunged deeper than ever into the mire, to end soon by falling, not as ripe fruit, but as rotten fruit, into the hands from which it was wished to snatch it.

JOHN SEMOING.

No. 2.

With Mr. Romero’s note of July 27, 1867.

[From the Avenir National, Paris, Friday, July 5, 1867.]

EXECUTION OF MAXIMILIAN.

There is no proof that the report of the execution is authentic, and we sincerely hope that the telegrams from New Orleans and New York have also deceived us this time, as they have most always done for the last six months.

We have the honor to belong to that democratic party whose first act, in its brief reign, was the abolishment of the death penalty in political matters. Like those who honored power by the use they made of it in 1848, we love clemency, and we do not believe the foundations of any power can be cemented by bloodshed. Such is the constant elementary instruction of morality, or, which is the same thing, of politics enlightened by experience.

We therefore hope the report of Maximilian’s execution may be contradicted; that the conqueror Juarez may show himself generous, heeding the councils that were sent him from Washington and Guernsey, If he follows other inspirations he will be blamed; but we cannot agree that the republic is forever disgraced by the execution of Maximilian.

We ask those papers, particularly La France and L’Union, to tell us if the Bonapartes were lastingly disgraced by having the Duke of Enghien shot at night in the forest of Vincennes, and if the Bourbons are perpetually dishonored by the death of Murat, who was shot at Pizzo as an adventurer and malefactor ?

A. PEYRAT.

No. 3.

[From the Avenir National, Paris, Sunday, July 7, 1867.]

POLITICAL REVENGE.

While sincerely regretting that Juarez did not think proper to follow the advice and example of President Johnson, and ennoble the triumph of the republican army by an act of clemency, we protest against the extravagant language of certain journals on hearing of Maximilian’s execution. One of those papers, La France, asks us “if the Duke of Enghien, shot at Vincennes, and Murat, shot at Pizzo, Charles the First, beheaded, and Louis the Sixteenth, guillotined, can serve as an excuse to the assassins of Maximilian?” La France makes us say what we did not say. We did not attempt to justify one execution by another; we only asked those who say the republicans of Mexico are disgraced by the death of Maximilian to tell us if the Bonapartes are dishonored by the death of the Duke of Eughien, and the Bourbons by the death of Murat. We await a response. We did not mention Louis XVI nor Charles I. We did not attempt to compare facts so dissimilar, and we are astonished that La France accused us of it. If that paper wants to know what we think of Maximilian death, it is this: Where certain papers find cause for crimination, we find useful lessons. The sanguinary executions of Maximilian and his defenders is the result of reprisals on account of the decree that outlawed the disaffected, issued on the 5th of October, 1865. What is proved by these reprisals is, that an arbitrary government is not the best; those using it are almost always condemned to suffer, and the excesses of one party prepares the way for the excesses of another adverse party. The party that outlaws is outlawed in turn, and the history of our revolutions plainly proves that he who unjustly takes off one head exposes his own.

It is on occasions of this kind that we must point out these warnings of history, to remind those who forget justice, that people and governments that violate it may expect revenge.

A. PEYRAT.

A correspondent from Mexico writes to the Moniteur Universal, on the 10th of October, 1865, as follows:

“A decree, dated the 30th October, countersigned by all the ministers, and approved by the cabinet and council of state, outlaws all those who may be taken with arms in their hands, or may have been in armed bands, and subjects them to trial by court-martial. By this single fact they will be condemned to the penalty of death, and the sentence shall be executed within twenty-four hours.

“The officials, the owners of landed property or mines, who do not inform the supreme government of the approach or formation of bands, shall be subject to fine and imprisonment, from $1,000 to $2,000. All able-bodied men between 18 and 55 shall arm for the defence of their localities. There shall be no pardon for those condemned to death. Foreigners condemned to other penalties shall be sent out of the country as soon as their sentences are pronounced.”

Here is the text of the decree rendered in October, 1865, by the Emperor Maximilian:

“1st. Every individual belonging to an armed band, with a pretext or not, shall be tried by court-martial. If found guilty of belonging to the band, he shall be condemned to death and be executed within 24 hours.

“2. Every individual belonging to a band taken in fighting shall be judged by the chief of the capturing force, who shall hear the case an pronounce sentence within 24 hours.

* * * * * * * * * * *

“5. The following persons shall be tried in accordance with Article I: Those aiding the rangers with arms, or in any other way. Those who give them advice, counsel, or information. Those who sell arms, horses, provisions, or anything for military use, knowingly to those rangers.”

We read in the Moniteur of the 1st December, 1865:

“Arteaga and Salazar, two rebel chiefs, were lately shot in Michoacan, after sentence by court-martial.”

In the Moniteur of the 9th December, 1865, we find this :

“Colonel Mendez, the captor of Arteaga, has been promoted to the rank of general, on account of his recent services in Michoacan.

“Marshal Bazaine announces a melioration in the condition of the Mexican empire. The partisans of a strong government, the only kind of government that can regenerate the country, have new hopes from the energetic measures adopted by the emperor Maximilian. Several rebel chiefs have presented themselves to the imperial authorities to profit by the amnesty accorded in the decree of the 30th October to all who lay down their arms before the 15th November. Such facts sufficiently demonstrate how necessary it was for the imperial government to issue the decrees mentioned.”

No. 4.

[From the Avenir National Paris, Saturday, July 3, 1867]

THE DUKE OF ENGHIEN AND MURAT.

We recommend what follows to the attention of all those who assert that the Mexican republic is forever dishonored by the execution of Maximilian; we recommend it particularly to the attention of La France and L’Union:

This first is for La France: We read in Napoleon’s will: “I have had the Duke of Enghien arrested and tried because it was necessary for the safety, interest, and honor of the French people, at a time when the Count of Artois kept sixty assassins in Paris, by his command. I would now do the same thing under similar circumstances.” In the memorial of Saint Helena we read: “If law had not been on my side against the Duke of Enghien,” said the Emperor, “I should have had natural law, that of self-defence, in my favor. His constant aim and that of his partisans was to take my life; I was everywhere assailed, and at every moment, with air-guns, infernal machines, conspiracies, plots and ambushes of all sorts. I was tired of it. I took the chance to strike terror among them, even those in London, and I succeeded. From that day conspiracies ceased. And who could blame me? What! they sought to murder me every day, at 150 leagues distance, and no power, no tribunal on earth, would protect me; and would they deny me the right of making war for war 7 Where is the cool man of the least judgment or sense of justice who would condemn me ? Where would be lay the blame, the odium, the crime ? Blood calls for blood; it is a natural reaction; woe be to him who provokes it!

“When one persists in exciting civil troubles or political commotions, he becomes their victim. One must be a fool or madman to think any party had the right to peril my existence and I not have the right to defend myself; that any party can place itself above the laws to take a man’s life, and then appeal to the laws for their protection. The chances ought to be even.”

Now here is something for the Union. It is about Murat and the way in which the royal party, now abusing the republicans for executing Maximilian, received the news of the execution of the ex-king of Naples in 1815. Observe that Murat, like Maximilian, had his Lopez, for he was betrayed by three of his aids, two of his fleet, and condemned to death by a committee of seven officers, who owed their rank and fortune to him. Here is the text of the decree rendered by Ferdinand for Murat’s trial:

“Article 1. General Murat shall be tried by a military commission appointed by the minister of war.

“Art. 2. Only a half hour shall be allowed to the condemned to receive religious help.

“Given at Naples October 9, 1815.”

Murat was shot half an hour after his condemnation, and on the 15th of December the Moniteur published the following correspondence, which was republished in the Times yesterday:

“Naples, December 2.

“All the cabinets of Europe are this day officially informed of Murat’s crime and its punishment. The wise conduct of his Majesty’s government has been unanimously applauded by all. This unanimous approbation of all the European powers is an homage rendered to the justice of the sentence pronounced on the Calabrian coast.

“If saving Murat’s life had been compatible with public peace, we are certain the King’s clemency would have spared it; but the sacrifice of one man’s life to save millions, and to prevent the recurrence of calamities that have long afflicted the whole world, by the reapearance of Bonaparte in France, and the temporary success of his guilty enterprise, have obliged all the King’s to put their nations under arms.

“The plains of Waterloo have been inundated with blood that might have been spared if the prisoner of Elba had been prevented from usurping the throne of Louis XVIII. God has not permitted the acts of France to be repeated in Italy; and now the whole world is grateful for this boon of Providence.

“His Majesty the Emperor of Russia, on receiving the news of the crime and punishment of Murat, ordered 100 sequins to be given to Betz, the cabinet messenger who brought it to him. Count Mocenigo, the minister plenipotentiary of that august monarch, near our court, had the honor yesterday to present to his Majesty our King the felicitations of his imperial Majesty upon the happy issue of that event.”

We hope these recollections will serve to calm a little the Union’s effervescence. What is astonishing, even shocking, is to see among those who declare the republic eternally dishonored by Maximilian’s execution the same party-scribblers who frightened France fifty years ago by the frenzy of their vengeance. Among the thousand facts that we might recall, those writers forget that their friends had a banquet on the very spot where General Mouton Duvernet was executed. At that banquet toasts were offered in joy at the general’s death, and the guests insisted upon having foie de mouton, pierced with a hundred knife-thrusts, served upon the tables. Did we ever declare the Bourbon monarchy eternally dishonored by that cannibal act ?

When political revenge and reprisal is spoken of the royalist party ought to remember 1815 and 1816. Be modest and speak low.

A. PEYRAT.

No. 5.

[From Le Monde, Paris, July 6.]

The Journal des Debats would like to place the Mexican expedition to the account of the “conservative and Catholic party,” and charges it with errors it never committed. We can explain our attitude in this affair, and repeat the advice we gave to the French government. In the first place, we never encouraged the expedition, and we even thought it strange that France should make war on Mexico for the benefit of private individuals. When a Frenchman goes to a foreign country he must submit to all its vicissitude; otherwise France becomes responsible for the slightest incident. If our countrymen suffer losses abroad, that is no reason for France to squander a hundred-fold in war to make good those losses, particularly in a country like Mexico. When England and Spain joined us in the undertaking, we suggested the danger of associating nations with such different tastes, interests, and prejudices in the same enterprise. We demonstrated the impossibility of a perfect understanding, but our advice did not stop the government.

We did not want a war with Mexico, but an alliance with the southern confederacy, while civil war was severing the United States. Then we could have continued the policy of Louis XVI by sustaining the independence of the southern States; and they could have persuaded Mexico to join them against the north, and their resistance would have been successful. The danger of a unity of power in America is a danger for old Europe. It might be put down by France and England combined, but that policy has not been suggested. The Journal des Debats itself confesses there was no sense in the Mexican expedition, unless intended to interfere in the American civil war; but that paper is mistaken when it says the Catholics sided with slavery. They defended the independence of the States as laid down in the primitive constitution of the United States, showing the tyrannical principle of unity and centralization on which the government at Washington was acting. That policy had nothing in common with the maintenance of slavery, and they mention no Catholic who spoke in favor of slavery. The victory of the north has been the oppression of the south; and, in fact, it is French policy that has been conquered on that occasion, because France did not venture to declare for either party, though her sympathies were with the southern confederacy.

As that policy could not be fixed upon the Catholics, the policy pursued in Mexico cannot be imputed to them either; and it is natural that the French government should have adopted the same equivocal policy in Mexico that she did towards the United States. The only difference was we had our flag and our interests in Mexico. It is true Maximilian was invited by the clerical party in Mexico, but that party did not control the empire. The emperor had hardly arrived when he quit the Catholics and took to modem liberalism. It is to be regretted that Maximilian had not the command of our army. The dualism of French and imperial command prevented all decisive and continued action. The French general had force on his side, and Maximilian had the dignity of rank. An instinctive jealousy could not be kept out of those two supreme authorities. The French general should have been better acquainted with the country, and particularly with the general political notions of its inhabitants, to judge properly of such a complicated situation Everybody is astonished that the army effected so little. The courage and energy displayed by Maximilian in his latter days make it to be regretted that he did not have the direction of military affairs from the beginning. We found that dissension that annuls and paralyzes every thing when we first embarked, escorted by the Spanish and English, and we had scarcely set foot in Mexico when power was divided.

The Catholic party would not have committed all those faults; and they have been committed against it. The sovereign pontiff gave Maximilian counsel of the highest wisdom; the prince’s fault is that he did not follow it, or that he persevered in an enterprise that did not conform to the intentions of the Holy See. We can do nothing in Mexico without the clergy. Why could not our generals see the absurdity of their acts when they undertook to defend a policy that differed in nothing from that of Juarez, and was founded on the confiscation of church property ? We do not say it was easy to regenerate Mexico. There was one chance to do it, and the Catholics showed it to us. We do not know what a Catholic general might have done. The truth is, the Catholics have committed no fault and have suffered everything. Let the responsibility, then, be imputed to modern ideas, to the principles of ‘89, and to the civil code, in the names of which we attempted to regenerate Mexico.

COQUILLE.

No. 6.

[From the Temps, Paris, Monday, July 8, 1867.]

BULLETIN OF THE DAY.

The Moniteur publishes another article on the sad drama at Queretaro. Its first words are:

“In less than half a century from its independence the ancient Spanish vice-royalty, so prosperous, so tranquil under the rule of the mother country, has thrice stained its soil with the blood of the chiefs of its government—Iturbide, Guerrero, and Maximilian.” Then it declares that punishment will soon follow, and Mexico will be happy to disappear from the list of independent nations and be absorbed by a powerful neighbor. But the paper adds: “The hour is not yet come; its history since 1810 explains its present and its future. The dispute between Juarez’s ambitious hired assassins will soon assume immense proportions and will again inundate the land with blood. Every element of civil power will be destroyed; armed bands will devastate the country and pillage the cities.” If it is strange to see the official paper, in the bitterness of its regrets, praise the degrading and oppressive Spanish rule in the New World, causing all the subsequent calamities of Mexico, it is not less curious to see it throw that country as a bait to the United States, when the sole object of our expedition was to prevent Mexico from falling into the lap of the great North American republic. Nothing is more replete with instruction of all kinds than such reflections; What is most striking in the language of the government organ is its pitiless prophecies against Mexico. In its divinations and maledictions the Moniteur is almost biblical. The president of the senate said in his speech yesterday, “You may be sure the blood of Maximilian will fall upon those who shed it, for inflexible justice imperiously demands it.”

The official journal goes further yet, and smothers the whole Mexican nation in its malisons;

If the execution of Maximilian was the work of armed soldiery in revenge, why blame the whole nation for it ? But if it was called for by the nation it cannot be true that the nation called him to the throne. However grieved humanity may be for acts like those at Queretaro, that is no reason for blaming and outlawing a whole nation for it. History has never ratified the severity of such judgments. The execution of Charles I did not prevent Europe from seeking Cromwell’s alliance. The sentence and death of Louis XVI did not prevent the coalition from recognizing the French republic. General Bonaparte said it was like the sun, and Napoleon surrounded himself with men who had acted in that famous drama. The blood of the most Christian King did not prevent the restoration from accepting Fouche’s services. A New York despatch of yesterday says General Santa Anna has suffered the same fate as Maximilian.

ULYSSE LADET.

No. 7.

[From La Liberty Paris, Monday, July 8, 1867.]

STILL TWO TONGUES AND TWO SCALES.

Exaggeration never failed to be followed by counteraction, and hence we mistrust it. The news of Maximilian’s condemnation in 1867 made the same impression on us that the news of his sanguinary decree did in 1865 The effects of that pitiless decree were first felt by Generals Arteaga and Salazar, two soldiers of Mexican independence, whose only crime was defending their country against the occupation and rule of strangers.

When the Moniteur Universel, the official paper of the French empire, published in its columns, on the 1st of December, 1865, the sanguinary decree of October of that year, and the condemnation and execution of Generals Arteaga and Salazar, whose letters to their mothers we published yesterday, did it find a single word of reprobation, a single word of blame ? No, that application of the terms of martial law appeared to it quite legitimate and very simple. As it expressed no indignation in 1865, how is it that it shows so much in 1867?

Is the crime of treason to humanity a less heinous crime than high treason, of which Mexico has made itself guilty, according to the official journal’s declaration in its number of this morning, the 7th July, 1867?

If the crime of treason to majesty is a greater crime than treason to humanity, what must the Moniteur of the 7th of July, 1867, think of the Moniteur of the 15th of December, 1815? In the last mentioned number we find the following lines:

“Naples, December 2.

“All the cabinets of Europe are this day officially informed of Murat’s crime and its punishment. The wise conduct of his Majesty’s government has been unanimously applauded by all. This unanimous approbation of all the European powers is an homage rendered to the justice of the sentence pronounced on the Calabrian coast.

“If saving Murat’s life had been compatible with public peace we are certain the King’s clemency would have spared it; but the sacrifice of one man’s life to save millions, and to prevent the recurrence of calamities that have long afflicted the whole world, by the reappearance of Bonaparte in France, and the temporary success of his guilty enterprise, have obliged all the kings to put their nations under arms.

“The plains of Waterloo have been bathed with blood that might have been spared if the prisoner of Elba had been prevented from usurping the throne of Louis XVIII. God has not permitted the acts of France to be repeated in Italy, and now the whole world is grateful for this boon of Providence.

“His Majesty the Emperor of Russia, on receiving the news of the crime and punishment of Murat, ordered 100 sequins to be given to Betz, the cabinet messenger who brought it to him. Count Mocenigo, the minister plenipotentiary of that august monarch near our court, had the honor yesterday to present to his Majesty our King the felicitations of his Imperial Majesty upon the happy issue of that event.”

Either these lines of the Moniteur of the 15th December, 1815, are the condemnation of the lines in the Moniteur of the 7th July, 1867, or the lines in the Moniteur of the 7th July, 1867, condemn the former article and the Emperor of Russia, who gives 100 sequins to Betz, together with all the sovereigns of Europe “who do homage to the justice of the sentence pronounced upon the coast of Calabria.”

Silence then to all exaggerations without memory, prudence, or equity, that would tend to draw France into ano her Mexican expedition if they were listened to.

Let us cease to have two tongues contradicting each other, and two scales that don’t agree in weights: one scale to weigh the executions of the 29th October, 1865; another to weigh those of the 19th June, 1867.

We must condemn all or none. But we must save all our severity, all our contempt, for the baseness and infamy of Colonel Lopez, an officer of the Legion of Honor, for if there is a crime that has no excuse it is treachery.

EMILE DE GIRARDIN.

No. 8.

Emile de Girardin on the address of the French Minister.

[From La Liberty July 12.]

We must not mistake the abuse of talent for the power of talent. Nothing can be more culpable than the pretension that seeks to transform most reprehensible acts into most praiseworthy deeds. Mons. Rouher persists in glorifying the thought that dictated the undertaking of the Mexican enterprise. All emphasis being set aside, what was that great thought ? We have looked for it in vain in two letters from the Emperor to General Forey, dated respectively July 7, 1862, and June 12, 1863, arid in the addresses of Mons. Billault, in those of Mons. Rouher, as also in the discourse pronounced day before yesterday by Mons. Granier de Cassagnac. We have found that great thought nowhere. We are, therefore, warranted in saying, in contradiction to Mons. Rouher’s assertions, that it never existed.

If that great thought never existed, where did Mons. Rouher, minister of state, speaking in the name of the French government, obtain the right to insult, as he did, a whole people, and to stigmatize by the word “assassin” the untiring defender of the independence of that people against foreign conquest and tyranny?

The insults thus lavished remind us of those so long heaped upon the Emir Abd-el-Kader, who had also been so infamous as to defend his country and his religion against French invasion and French rule. When at length the day of justice dawned, the Emir Abd-el-Kader was placed on the French pension list.

Mons. Rouher was not even patient enough to await the reception of news that might have shown that President Juarez acted of his own free will in the matter of the execution ere he called the Mexican executive an assassin.

Had Jefferson Davis been tried immediately after his capture and sentenced to death at once, would President Johnson have had the power to save his life ? Was it not necessary to wait two years that the feeling of anger and the thirst for vengeance with which the republicans were possessed might be allayed ?

What a difference exists between the insulting and impassioned utterances that belittle Mons. Rouher and the dignified and impartial declaration that lends greatness to the emperor Maximilian! Let us compare.

Maximilian, in a letter dated from Mexico, October 2, 1865, thus renders homage to the courage and consistancy of Juarez:

“October 2, 1865.

“The cause that has been sustained with such courage and constancy by Don Benito Juarez.”

And in a letter dated February 9, 1867, and addressed by the emperor Maximilian to Mons. Lares, president of the council of ministers, the archduke again renders homage to the bravery and perseverance of a chief impelled to action by one great idea. He says:

“February 9, 1867.

“The republican forces, who were represented as being demoralized, disorganized, and united only by the projects of plunder, prove by their conduct that they form a homogeneous army, whose soldiers are nerved by the courage and perseterance of a chief impelled to action by one great idea, that of the necessity of defending the independence of the nation, which he believes to be menaced by the establishment of our empire.”

What a lesson do these lines give to Mons. Rouher! How clearly they prove that dignity of character, even when uninvested with the prestige of talent, rises far above talent divested of character.

[From Le Temps, July 15.]

While maintaining that the Mexican expedition was all it should be, M. Rouher confesses its lamentable results. We have left Mexico without obtaining any of the guarantees we sought to obtain, after expending 600,000,000, according to the government—upward of 900,000,000, according to M. Thiers. Who is to be responsible for the check? The opposition ? That preposterous assertion is no longer ventured, save in some prints whose intrepidity verges on the ridiculous. The minister now prefers laying the blame on Providence. We think M. Thiers was very harsh in threatening the ministers with impeachment. When statesmen raise their hands toward heaven and supplicate, they should be given what they ask—indulgence.

[From La Gazette de France.]

M. Rouher has spoken. What a disappointment for those who would persist in hoping against hope! What! That is really ail the government have to say in defence of an expedition undertaken in defiance of public opinion. We expected some revelation, some disclosure which would extenuate the fearful responsibility the government has incurred, but nothing was forthcoming. Words, protestations of patriotism, sentimental utterances, but not one serious refutation! M. Rouher’s speech is the last and heaviest blow dealt at this sad Mexican affair.

No. 9.

Political consequences of the execution of the Emperor Maximilian.

[From the Courrier Francais.]

Paris, Wednesday, July 10, 1867.

When the conformation of the tragic end of the emperor Maximilian reached Europe with its sad echo, some persons expressed a fear, we will not say hope, that the French government that initiated the unfortunate expedition might send a fleet to bombard Vera Cruz, i which fell into Juarez’s hands at the same time as Mexico. We observe this concluding phrase in the Moniteur, in its article upon the subject: “The condemnation of all civilized nations will be the first punishment of a government that has such a chief at its head.” What other punishment will there be ? Do we see a menace in this sentence, or simply an imprecation ? The second note of Sunday in the official paper gives an answer to the question: “The punishment will certainly come, and Mexico will be lucky to disappear from the list of independent nations, and see itself absorbed by its mighty neighbor.” So the French government gives the United States the job of taking vengeance for Maximilian’s murder!

This note has relieved our anxiety; it shows that the Napoleonic idea of the triumph of the Latin races in the New World is definitely abandoned.’ The bullets that destroyed the unlucky emperor’s life also killed the unlucky idea that has already cost France so much blood and money: and we are very furtunate in escaping with such cost from the consequences of an expedition that we were once told was the greatest enterprise of the reign.

Who would have suspected to see such an about face in the official papers, after hearing them daily denounce the aggressive ambition of the United States ? We now advise the government journals to moderate the expression of their new-found sentiments; in certain delicate and painful situations silence is the best expression of profound emotion. We have already noticed a misplaced exuberance of expression in the pages of the Moniteur that is scarcely consistent with official dignity. But La France published a dangerous article yesterday evening. That paper says that Maximilian’s execution “will sound in North America like a bloody outrage to the cabinet at Washington.” “Maximilian’s assassination, against the intercession of President Johnson,” continues that senatorial journal, “is worse than an insult from Juarez; it is an act of ingratitude towards the great American republic.”

Hence the execution of Maximilian is a check to the United States, for which they must draw an exemplary vengeance.

Here is the way La France demonstrates the second part of its argument: “If Juarez rules Mexico, he must thank the United States for it; for, without the influence of that nation in his favor and against the Mexican empire, he would never have succeeded. We have sacrificed our Mexican interests for peace with the United States. We retired at the request of a great nation with whom we were at peace, and we have left Juarez a place he could not have acquired otherwise.”

Why not say plainly that France betrayed Maximilian to Juarez to please the United States ? How can those who pretend to be friends of the government print such stuff?

We are not bewildered by the sound of great words like glory and patriotism; but we have an idea of national honor, and we repudiate any complicity with the policy of La France in asserting that there has been any insult to the dignity of our country.

We never approved of the Mexican expedition, and we condemned the idea of the triumph of the Latin races, that was used as an excuse for it. We confess a greater sympathy for the Anglo-Saxon genius that acts instead of talking, while the Latin talent is in talk and not in action.

Not to speak of the result of a contest between the two races, we boldly say a preponderance of the Latin races would be a sad thing for the good of this world, and we advise a miscegenation with the Anglo-Americans and Saxous, so as to improve our diminishing genius.

We think the government did right to give up an impossible undertaking; we are pleased to see it abandon an idea that can produce no good effect; for no alliance can be more useful to us than an alliance with the United States. It must be an alliance of reciprocal dignity, and we must not be ridiculous in showing the world we think the United States will revenge the check of our policy in Mexico, just to please us, when the United States caused that check. If the malevolence of the United States did extend so far, we ought not to be its dupes. To carry out the argument of La France, we ought to declare war immediately against the United States for deceiving us in that indignant manner. We ought to have placed Maximilian and our unfortunate countrymen under the protection of the United States, and they would have been safe.

We must cease these deceptions since they deceive nobody; better confess our faults than aggravate the circumstances by trying to conceal them.

What has just happened to us with Prussia ought to serve as a lesson to us. After lauding its action towards Germany, just at a time when its friendship would be most useful to us, we put ourselves in a hostile attitude towards it. We did not present ourselves when our intervention might have changed the aspect of things, and when we would have had all the friends of liberty and justice on our side; and now we expose ourselves to a universal war, without the support of public opinion. The occupation of Mexico in 1862, our meddling in the affairs of Poland in 1863, and our opposition to Prussia, tempts a triple alliance of the United States, Russia, and Prussia against France. This is the effect of a policy, the chief fault of which was, it appeared to be no policy. I hope we may never be called to atone for such optimism.

A. VERMOREL.

No. 10.

[From the Phare de la Loire.]

Nantes, Saturday, July 6, 1867.

But why speak of the future ? Our geniuses, though sorry for Maximilian’s execution, cannot pause at conjectures when the present offers such a grave subject of reflection. All France wanted Juarez to spare the ex-emperor, and yet the papers use very different words to express the act of Juarez.

The Moniteur calls Maximilian’s death an “assassination;” the Epoch calls it a “crime ?” the Paris Journal, “a lamentable event;” the National Opinion, “a catastrophe;” the Union, “an outrage;” the National Future, “an execution;” the Liberty, “a fault;” the Morning Post, “the end of a tragedy that furnishes a good lesson to governments and nations.”

We have a correspondence from London, of the 3d, that says the enemies of the Emperor of the French “will try to throw the responsibility of the Mexican expedition upon him.” The correspondent says it would be great injustice, and adds: 1st. In offering the crown of Mexico to a prince of the house of Hapsburg, Napoleon III did an act of civility to the vanquished of Solferino; 2d. The chief of state was mistaken in the affair; 3d. Napoleon could not have held Mexico longer without a war with the United States; 4th. Tax-payers demand the recall of the troops and the ceasing of the sacrifice of men and money; 5th. The French government did enough for the emperor Maximilian when it sent the French flag into the most distant provinces of Mexico, and spent 500,000,000 for his benefit.

The young prince thought he could “maintain order in Mexico,” if left to himself; but he has “cruelly expiated his error.”

The same correspondent goes on to say: “France and Maximilian both erred in treating the men that opposed them as robbers. One who fights for the independence of his country is not a bandit, though he may be in rags and belong to no particular division. Maximilian did wrong to sign the decree of the 8th October against armed men; he did wrong in shooting Arteaga and Salazar, who were taken prisoners by Mendez. He gave the enemy the right of reprisals by that act. We are sorry that Juarez did not spare a man that was betrayed to him: but perhaps he was afraid of seeming weak to his rivals. The execution, that nothing can justify, will not contribute to the consolidation of his government and the re-establishment of order in Mexico.”

Our readers may have noticed the sentences “the condemnation of all civilized nations,” “the first punishment of the Mexican government.” Does that mean that Napoleon has another in store for it ?

Contrary to expectation, the Emperor of Austria will come to Paris. An article in the Debats, from Vienna, says: “It is to cement the bonds of friendship lately established between Austria and France. The meeting of the two monarchs of France and Austria may produce combinations of great advantage to both countries.”

Napoleon III received his guest privately. The two sovereigns spent some days in the camp at Chalons, where there were grand reviews, and the two emperors visited the charitable institutions together.

It is said the committee on appropriations has rejected Mr. Berryer’s 28,500,000 amendment, money due from Pinart & Co. as the balance of the Mexican contribution.

We have not space to analyze the speeches, but those of Lanjuinais and Favre deserve particular attention. The speech of the deputy from Nantes was also calculated to give him position in parliament.

E. MANGIN.

[Untitled]

The Phare de la Loire publishes the following letter, which is circulating in Paris :

TO THE DEMOCRATS.

The Mexicans have tried and executed Maximilian. French democrats have already expressed the wish that Juarez might pardon his prisoner. We will wait, however, for monarchists, old and new, to accuse us of urging the act, according to our bloody customs.

We will put these two questions to the opponents of democracy:

1st. When the police, in contempt of the law of nations, caught the Duke of Enghien abroad and brought him to France, did Bonaparte the first consul spare his life?

The ditches of Vincennes have the answer.

2d. When the King Murat reclaimed his throne in Naples, did his lucky rival the Bourbon pardon him ? The Neapolitans yet remember the bloody day of the 13th October, 1815.

And yet Enghein thought he had the hereditary right of his ancestors on his side, and Murat could allege a recent possession of the crown.

Accept the assurance, &c.,

* * *

[From the London News, July 10.]

[Untitled]

It is only too easy to account for and excuse the distressing exaggerations into which some of our contemporaries who conspicuously applauded the attempt of the Emperor Napoleon to found a vicarious empire in Mexico, and others who habitually practice upon the ignorance, the credulity, or the forgetfulness of their readers, are descanting upon the deplorable execution of the Archduke Maximilian of Austria. These journals appear to imagine that when they have called President Juarez a “savage” and an ‘“assassin,” sentenced him to the execration of the civilized world and of posterity, and invoked the retribution of the United States government—of all governments in the world—on the head of the man who has at least succeeded in clearing the western world of an invading army and of an alien monarchy, history will accept their suppressions and distortions of the truth and their hollow declamation as a conclusive verdict upon a series of transactions of which the court-martial at Queretaro is the last and most lamentable, but not perhaps the most disgraceful. Without surprise, but not without regret and shame, we find English journals vying with the Moniteur in Veracity, and with the Constitutional and Patrie in expressions of remorse which read like Mr. Broadhead’s indignant denunciations of the crimes he ordered and paid for.

Need we protest that there is not a man with a heart in his breast, of whatever political party or opinion, who contemplates without the profoundest pity the tragic destiny of a prince endowed with all the charms and graces of character which in private life win the love of friends, and in public life engage the loyalty of nations! Assuredly if there be any political party, or any portion of the press of Europe, which has a peculiar right to condemn and deplore an act of vengeance and the loss of a rare opportunity and example of mercy and forgiveness, it is the liberal and democratic party, who, in 1848, abolished the punishment of death for political offences—it is that portion of the European press which, in 1864, dissuaded the unfortunate Archduke Maximilian from offering himself as the dupe and the victim of the Emperor Napoleon’s dreams and designs. Those dreams and designs depended for their fulfilment on the disruption and subversion of the American republic, and the recognition by force of arms of the slaveholding confederacy, at the cost of untold calamities, for the greater glory of the second empire. Our tory contemporaries are at least consistent. They have seized the occasion of this catastrophe in Mexico to renew their complaints of the shortsighted policy of the liberal English government, which declined to lend the blood and treasure of this country to that Napoleonic “idea;” which consented, indeed, to join with France and Spain in demanding of the Mexican government the payment of certain money claims, and the punishment of outrages committed, not by the acts of President Juarez, but by the promoters of a Mexican empire—by Marquez and Miramon and their accomplices— but declined, thanks to the honesty and prudence of our minister accredited to President Juarez, and to the commander of our naval forces, supported by the Spanish General, (Prim,) to break (after the fashion of the French general at Rome, in 1849) the convention of Soledad, and to convert a limited and defined expedition into an illegitimate, inordinate, and ruinous adventure, begun in perfidy and fated to disaster. Let the official rhetoricians in the corps legislatif, and the official journals of the second empire, pretend to disguise, if they can, the full and absolute responsibility of their master for that enormous conspiracy of factious priests, palace jobbers, imperialist agents and adventurers, and Mexican outlaws, against the independence of the United States, under cover of a crusade against the anarchy of Mexico. Hundreds of innocent French families have paid the penalty of that magnificent romance in the blood of their children and in “bonds” not worth the paper they were printed on. The claims of French merchants upon the Mexican republic were insignificant in comparison with those of English creditors. The Mexican empire has cost France forty millions sterling; and, according to the Moniteur, the last state of Mexico is worse than the first. The French army not only did not extinguish civil war in Mexico; it exasperated and inflamed every domestic faction in that distracted country; it brought civil war and left civil war behind. Is it, we take leave to ask, the part of independent English journals to absolve the real authors of this immense calamity, because Maximilian preferred his honor to his safety, and declined to take shelter with his deceivers and betrayers ? The true history of all these transactions remains to be written, and we believe the materials for writing it are in sure hands, and will be submitted in due time to the judgment of the civilized world. That “black spot” in the splendid picture of imperial success, which even M. Rouher confesses will not be wiped out:

I do the wrong, and first begin to brawl.

The secret mischief that I set abroach

I lay unto the grievous change of others.

But then I sigh, and with a piece of Scripture,

Tell them that God bids us do good for evil.

With a strange confusion of ideas, the Moniteur describes the sentence of the court-martial which unfortunately followed the instructions of the French generals, as “an act of regicide.” If the native constitutional government of Mexico had been a monarchy, and the Austrian archduke had been the hereditary or even the elected sovereign of that country, defeated and slain by the leaders of a domestic insurrection, then no doubt it would be proper to characterize the sanguinary act of the victorious insurgents as “regicide.” But Mexico was not a monarchy. Maximilian was neither the hereditary nor the elected ruler of Mexico, as the simple fact of the total collapse of his empire within three months of the departure of the French army too clearly proves. At any rate, he was not a monarch in the eyes of the native republican government, which never ceased to exercise its functions, though, as it has sometimes happened to European monarchs, it was temporarily superseded by a foreign prince invited by a rebel faction and imposed by a foreign army. How could the authorities of the Mexican republic be guilty of regicide ? Such a crime was unknown to their political calendar. Nor is the name of Yturbide very judiciously cited by the Moniteur. Yturbide, it is true, was made emperor by the Mexicans; he was a Mexican born; he was created emperor by his own people, and by his own people deposed and pensioned. It was not as emperor, but as a rebel who had attempted a coup d’état against the institutions of his country, that he was subsequently shot; and that, no doubt, is enough to justify the sympathy of the Moniteur. While we most heartily subscribe, in common with the whole liberal press of Europe, to the abolition of the punishment of death for political offences—a doctrine, by-the-by, by none more eloquently advocated than by Louis Blanc, in the chapter of his “Histon of the Revolution” on the death of Louis XVI—we cannot but perceive that the fate of Maximilian of Austria bears no sort of analogy to any of those “judicial murders” of great personages which history records and a milder age condemns. The apologists of that savage decree of October, 1865, which the French persuaded Maximilian to sign, are doubtless justified in asserting that the unhappy and amiable prince was overborne by the pressure of military men, who, as all Europe well knows, are never slow to shed blood, and who have not learnt to respect human life in Algeria or in Paris. Is it, then, unreasonable to suppose that President Juarez, whom those who know him intimately declare to be “a brave, humane, and honest citizen,” was overborne by the military officers who sat on that court-martial at Queretaro, some of whose comrades, friends, and relatives, perhaps, had been shot in cold blood in pursuance of that imperial decree? It is hard to be compelled, in the interests of truth and justice, to recall these facts at the present moment. But if history is philosophy teaching by example, let us at least, whether imperialists or republicans, monarchs or ubjects, endeavor to draw some profitable, though bitter, lessons from these sad events.

There is another point in the mournful narrative, which, in justice both to Maximilian and to the Emperor of the French, should be correctly stated. In March last the emperor Maximilian had decided on abandoning Mexico. Two Austrian ships-of-war were ready to receive him at Vera Cruz. An aide-de-camp was actually sent from Vienna to Gibraltar to meet him on his return to Europe. Who detained him? That clerical party which three years ago was intriguing at the Tuilleries, and agitating at Miramar to induce the archduke to embark upon a crusade for the overthrow of the constitutional government of their country; that clerical party from whose counsels the honesty and intelligence of Maximilian, and even the courageous piety of that gentle and admirable lady whose bright young life was destined to set so soon in dark perplexity, recoiled in disgust when they discovered all its foulness and rapacity; that clerical party which denounced the emperor Maximilian at Rome, and withdrew from him the benediction of the Holy Father, in March last, when the French army had precipitately disappeared from the scene of its sterile triumphs and its uncompleted conquests, and Maximilian was abandoned an easy prey to the national forces he had defied; that clerical party which had invited, deserted, and denounced him, intercepted him on his way to Vera Cruz, and, with offers of a new treasury and a new army, entreated and persuaded him to retrace his steps to the capital and pursue the war in that quarter. And who were the generals of this clerical party? The notorious Miramon and Marquez: Miramon, who had broken into and pillaged the British embassy; Marquez, a man of a thousand murders. But the clerical piastres were not forthcoming, and the clerical army was a handful of desperate outlaws, led by men of infamous reputation. Thus, as even a semi-official compiler of news for the French public is fain to acknowledge, “those ho first invited Maximilian to Mexico retained him there; and as they deceived him when they said that the whole country awaited him as its saviour, they likewise deceived him when, at the last moment, they persuaded him that he might hold the country by force of arms, although the French themselves admitted that this was impossible.” This semi-official historian of course forgets that M. Rouher himself, over and over again, in the corps legislatif, has said and written precisely what the clerical party in Mexico told the ill-fated Maximilian last March, and what the French themselves then admitted was impossible. Our duty as simple servants of the truth is to take care that neither the clerical party nor the second empire shall be defrauded of its just share of responsibility. The task is not a happy or a grateful one, and were it not for the ill-judged attempt of certain of our contemporaries to assist the Moniteur in darkening knowledge, we would gladly leave it to the passionless and tearless tribunal of history.

[Untitled]

[The Evening Star, London, Tuesday, July 9, 1867.]

The journal which is the official organ of the French government has just published its own version of the recent history of Mexico. Of course that version is a heavy and wholesale condemnation of the Mexican people. It is but natural that the Moniteur should write in this style now, just as it was natural that three years ago it should describe the Mexicans as a noble race, nocking devotedly round the prince who came to deliver them from the tyranny of native republicanism, But however we may all lament the fate of the deceived and betrayed Maximilian, we must not accept a court elegy as history, or take a historiographer’s romance as a correct statement of facts. Perhaps our readers, before quite making up their minds that the Mexican republicans are mere murderers and their President only a captain of cut-throats, will allow us to invite their attention to the circumstances, now conveniently set aside, out of which the whole of this Mexican imbroglio arose. We are perpetually being told just now that the outrages upon the property and the persons of Europeans perpetrated by the republican government of Mexico provoked and justified the determination of the Emperor of the French to establish a strong and orderly government in that country. But those who tell us of this do not always take the trouble to explain that the perpetrators of the outrages were the government of Miramon and Marquez, whom Benito Juarez overthrew.

Juarez, the first native President, established the first really constitutional government known in Mexico. He upset the infamous and blood-stained rule of Miramon and the church party. The British representative in Mexico, writing in May, 1861, to the English cabinet, thus spoke of the new government—that of Juarez” : “They who witnessed the murders, the acts of atrocity and plunder, almost of daily occurrence, under the government of General Miramon and his counsellors Señor Diaz and General Marquez, cannot but appreciate the existence of law and justice. Foreigners, especially, who suffered so heavily under that arbitrary rule and by the hatred and intolerance towards them which are a dogma of the church party in Mexico, cannot but make a broad distinction between the past and the present.” The same authority wrote thus: “I do not believe it possible that the church party, or that the former reign of intolerance and superstition, can ever be restored to power; so far, at least, has been secured by the result of the late civil war—the first contest for principles, it maybe remarked, in this republic.” It was thus the English representative in Mexico regarded the installation of the Juarez government. He viewed it as a triumph of principle, and as the inauguration of a reign of freedom and peace in Mexico. How does the same writer—how also does Sir Charles Wyke, our plenipotentiary during the Mexican intervention—speak of the men Juarez had driven from power, the men whom the Emperor Napoleon restored to power, the men who, we grieve to say, were the counsellors and colleagues of Maximilian, and who dishonored him even in death by sharing his fate ? Over and over again, in official despatches, do our diplomatic representatives describe these men as infamous and bloodthirsty miscreants. “The infamous Marquez is still pursuing his course of murder and rapine,” writes Mr. Mathew, the British chargé d’affaires. The open robbery of the British legation by Miramon is a fact no one can have forgotten When at an early stage of the European intervention Miramon made his appearance under French protection, the British admiral in command of our ships declared that if this man did not leave the country he must be at once arrested and tried as a robber and a murderer; and Miramon, declining the alternative, actually did quit the country, and did not dare to return until the English had gone, and the emperor Maximilian had come.

These are facts which do not rest upon unofficial authority. They are to be found in the formal reports of our own diplomatic representatives. All the outrages, plunders, debts, for which Juarez was called upon to make reparation, were the doings of his predecessors—of his enemies whom he had driven from power. It was not unfair that he should be made to compensate for them. He succeeded to the debts as well as to the power of his predecessor. But what the English representative said at the time, what we ourselves said then and say now, is that he only wanted time to pay all: or, at most, that the occupation of the Vera Cruz custom-houses by the European allies would have secured proper and prompt liquidation of the debts. Has the world forgotten the famous Jecker loan business? This loan was one of the grand claims which France made war on Juarez to enforce. Listen to the account of the transaction given by Sir Charles Wyke, our plenipotentiary, in a despatch to Earl Russell:

“When the Miramon government were on their last legs, and utterly penniless, the Swiss house of Jecker & Co., in Mexico, lent them $750,000, and received in return for the advance bonds to be payable at some future period to the amount of $15,000,000. Shortly after this outrageous proceeding Miramon was upset, and succeeded by his rival Juarez, who was then called upon by M. Jecker, who was under French protection, to pay the above named enormous sum, on the plea that one government must be held responsible for the acts and obligations of the other. Juarez refused to do so, and in this resolution was supported by the opinion of all impartial people in Mexico. I have always understood that his government were willing to repay the original sum lent of $750,000, with five per cent, interest thereon, but repudiated the idea of their being liable for the $15,000,000.”

To enforce this monstrous claim France made war on Juarez. She brought back to power Miramon, and Marquez, and Mejia. She forced an emperor on the Mexicans—an emperor, with Miramon, and Marquez, and Mejia for counsellors. The word “forced” is literally correct. The Juarists defeated the French invaders before Puebla, and for one long year the French besieged that city in vain. At last, having got heavy re-enforcements, they assaulted and took it after a desperate struggle, and with fearful slaughter. Then Maximilian was called to the capital, and crowned by the conquerors. Then he issued the unfortunate decrees, of which we publish a copy to-day; and the Paris Moniteur coolly notified the execution of two of the principal Juarist generals, and commended the strong and severe policy of the new emperor. Now these things are facts which defy all contradiction. No ravings about Juarist savagery and Indian monstrosity can get rid of any of them. It would be well for English readers to think over them a little. We do not say they justify the execution of Maximilian. In our eyes nothing whatever could justify such a deed. In our eyes it must always seem a dark stain on Mexican republicanism. But these things at least show that there was a good deal to be said upon the other side, and that human nature being what it is, there is nothing, perhaps, very surprising in the fact that men on whom three years of civil war—and such civil war!—had been forced by an invader, should in the hour of their triumph have sunk to the level of their enemies, and forgotten to be merciful.

The execution of Maximilian.

Kemptown, July 8.

Sir: Opposed as I am to capital punishment, especially for political offences, I cannot sympathize in the violent outcry now raised against Juarez and the Mexican government. It is worth nothing that those who denounce the Mexicans so violently were conspicuous among the most ardent defenders of Mr. Eyre, and of the miscreants who aided and abetted him in shooting “niggers,” in flogging women, in burning negro huts, and in laying waste a whole district, leaving hundreds of families homeless and destitute.

The Mexican republicans have dealt somewhat roughly with foreign invaders, animated by sordid or ambitious motives. But is that a reason for breaking off diplomatic intercourse with their government 1 We can easily understand why the Moniteur endeavors to lash the public mind to fury, and to divert the current of popular indignation from Napoleon and direct it against Juarez; but what is that to us ?

The reactionary party in the Old World failed to break up or divide the great American republic, and now, in the same spirit and in the interest of the priest party, urge on the United States government to crush the republicans in Mexico. But in this odious attempt I trust they will also be defeated, and that the Mexicans, like the Americans themselves, maybe allowed to settle their affairs without foreign intervention.

I remain, sir, yours faithfully,

WILLIAM CONINGHAM.

The Editor of the Star.