550 [Assembly 



Our gallant soldiers die of wounds that gangrene from copper 

 shot. 



And Mexico is so poor, and her government is so poor, that there 

 is no doubt, the destruction of human life out of the question, that 

 this present war is one of the best things, the most profitable things 

 that ever ocurred to her. In the first place, since, according to the 

 rules of modern chivalrous warfare, we pay for all supplies furnished 

 our armies, we bring to the farmer's door wherever they go, a home 

 market for all he has to spare, for which he is paid in specie, and 

 doubtless at a very remunerating price. And, secondly, as we block- 

 ade all their ports, so that no foreign importations can be made, we 

 keep in the country all the money that would otherwise be sent out 

 to pay for these imported foreign manufactures j and, if we keep up 

 the war sometime longer, we shall probably hear of manufactories 

 springing up in Mexico, from the necessity of the case. 



Why has not Mexico canals, and rail-roads, and ships, and docks, 

 crowded and flourishing cities, and a smiling country, and well paid, 

 well fed, well clad inhabitants? 



The answer suggests itself to every one's mind. She has no arts, 

 no commerce, no manufacturts; no nothing to buy, and use, and con- 

 sume, and cause a demand and furnish a customer for her agricultural 

 productions; this is why she is poor and weak, more so than when 

 Cortes marched to her chief city; and her lands are owned in great 

 estates by great landlords, with farms that are measured by leagues, 

 and cultivated by those who are hardly better than slaves, because 

 one of the results of a condition merely agricultural, where profits 

 are very small, if they are at all, and land is but cheap, is the acqui- 

 sition by the wealthy few of all the soil. 



How different, Heaven be thanked! is our own condition. Our 

 whole land covered with smiling villages and pleasant farms, and 

 filled with a busy, happy, intelligent and prosperous people. 



Would that it might properly be, that in the place of an irruption 

 of armed men, we could invade Mexico with commerce and manu- 

 factures — with arts instead of arms! Raise her condition, elevate 

 her people, and make her worth a conquest, jf conquered she must 

 be. 



The great difference between her and us is caused, not merely by 

 our differing races and different institutions of government, but mainly 



