of his successors, before leaving the Foreign-office, amongst the last of his official acts, appointed the magnanimous Captain Elliot, of opium celebrity, to the office of Her Majesty's Consul-general in Texas. His lordship has thus done all in his power to clinch the recognition of Texas; but as his lordship was throughout over-reached by General Hamilton, and led to acknowledge Texas upon grounds false and delusive, contrary to every British interest and international right, my Lord Aberdeen ought not to be fettered in his review of the whole bearings of that most disgraceful treaty. Those who have read Mr. Richard Hartnel's pamphlet, entitled Texas and California, will find that, in the opinion of Le Constitutionel of Paris, of 10th March last, Lord Palmerston's treaty with General Hamilton left a loophole for the Texans to offer certain special privileges to France*, and that the Texan Land Company of Exeter Street, Strand, scrupled not to represent the British Government as lending a

*"On prétend que le Général Hamilton offre une franchise complète au commerce français. Les Texiens ont, à la vérité, conclu avec l'Angleterre un traité par lequel ils s'engagent à la traiter sur le pied de la nation la plus favorisée. Ils se sont réservé, cependant, le droit d'accorder des privilèges spéciaux à quiconque leur offrirait des avantages équivalens, et l'Angleterre ne serait pas fondée à réclamer le bénéfice de ces stipulations exceptionnelles. Le Texas deviendrait, pour ainsi dire, une colonie française, mais une colonie independante, s'appartenant à ellemême et ne nous coûtant rien."

EE

sanction to emigration to Texas. Many other proofs might be adduced of the artful and tortuous policy pursued by the Texans, but those I have quoted most interest the honour of Her Majesty's government, and are quite sufficient to justify Lord Aberdeen to reconsider every ground and allegation made by General Hamilton, whereby he committed Lord Palmerston to the acknowledgment of Texas.

If, after a careful review of the whole circumstances, Lord Aberdeen should find that the acknowledgment of Texas cannot be revoked, the appointment of a diplomatic agent there will follow as a matter of course; but that agent assuredly should not be Captain Elliot, or any other individual unacquainted with the Spanish language, and true bearings of the question between Mexico and Texas. The recognition of Texas is a great evil; but supposing it an evil unavoidable, it is much to be desired that the representative of Her Majesty, at the seat of the Texan government, should be a man of sense, of principle, and experience,-not a pro-slavery and anti-aborigines man,-but one likely to have weight with that government, and to

"Such are the prospects offered by General Hamilton and Mr. Burnley to the authors of this paper, and communicated by them confidentially to their friends; on the one hand, a nucleus for the formation of an Anglo-Texan Land Company, under the faint sanction of the British and Texan Governments!!!"-See Texas and California, page 19.

exert his influence in disposing it to adopt a policy compatible with the rights, peace, and safety of its neighbours. If the course of Texan lawless aggression is to be stopped, and peace with Mexico negociated, Her Britannic Majesty must not be represented in Texas by any visionary enthusiast, believing that the world is to benefit by the extinction of Mexicans and Indians, and the substitution of Anglo-Saxon Americans; or that the Mexicans are to be made happy and prosperous by carrying the frontier of their Anglo-American spoilers into their close vicinity. Such monstrous ideas have indeed been avowed; but Richard Hartnel, in his pamphlet above quoted, has well exposed their glaring absurdity, and they are not likely to have much weight with so refined and experienced a diplomatist as Lord Aberdeen.

It is not for me to make suggestions to his lordship; but from the terms in which I heard Mr. Crawford invariably spoken of in Texas, and from his intimate acquaintance with the language, and all the relations and interests of the Mexicans, I cannot help admitting that there is much truth in what Mr. Richard Hartnel says of him. In the passage quoted in the next page he obviously alludes to my present work, but he is incorrect in saying I resided in Texas as many months as Mr. Kennedy did days, or that I pretend to any literary eminence. The reader, therefore, will only consider the following

quotation as of importance from the just testimony it bears to Mr. Crawford.

"I approve highly of the object of Mr. Kennedy's book on Texas, in the sense explained by himself in the first and ninth paragraphs of his letter in the Times of yesterday. How far his written work bears the impress of such a spirit, I will know better when I have read his book again in connexion with that soon to be published, of a literary gentleman much more recently arrived from Texas than Mr. Kennedy, and who, I learn, has spent as many months there as Mr. Kennedy spent days. When the latter comes out, without knowing its contents, I challenge a compa-rison of my veracity with that of Mr. Kennedy or Mr. Nicholas Carter; and it so happens that an authority, to which the world will attach much more credit than either, can be appealed to. I refer to J. T. Crawford, Esquire, Her Majesty's Consul to Tampico, who, I am told, arrived by last packet.

"It is understood that that gentleman visited Texas as a commissioner on the part of the British Government. From the high opinion entertained of his character and talents by the British merchants of Tampico, it is evident that Her Majesty's Government could not confide to better hands the care of British interests in Texas, and, amongst others, the right of the Mexican bond-holders to certain lands there, 'the deceptive character' in the Mexican transfer to which, Mr. Kennedy claims some credit for exposing in his book, as well as the superiority of the 'enlightened commercial and financial principles of Texas, as contrasted with the fiscal barbarism of Mexico,'-of which more anon.

"Mr. Kennedy cannot object to Mr. Crawford upon the ground of being a kinsman of mine. I cannot boast of him in that near relation; but his upright and honourable character is not unknown to me. Like Mr. Kennedy, I love to enable my readers to appreciate the trustworthiness of my views and opinions, by adducing the testimony of others.' In this spirit I

referred Mr. Kennedy to my cousin William, of Monterey, (of whose respectability, his old partner, Hugh M'Culloch, Esquire, No. 9, Crescent, Minories, London, can inform him), to Captain Hall, of Messrs. Hall and Boyd, Breezer's Hill; and to Mr. R. Walkinshaw, of Durango; and in the same spirit I now refer to Mr. Crawford."

I have already dwelt at some length on the commercial prospects of Texas, and the absurdity of attempting to alter the existing state of things in Mexico, or the United States, by entering into treaties with the lawless and impoverished Texans. Yet I am willing to admit that many radical errors exist in the present fiscal policy of Mexico, as the following correspondence, which appeared in the Morning Chronicle of the 12th of October, 1841, will amply demonstrate :

"The intelligence we announced on the 5th instant, of the proceedings in Mexico, proved correct. The subjoined letter from a Spanish merchant in Tepic, conveys some useful information regarding the views of the Mexicans on their own political reforms, as well as on their views with regard to Texas. We cannot for a moment believe that the government of the United States would sanction any piratical inroads upon the Texan territories; and look with regret upon the resolution said to be entertained by the Mexican government to attempt the reduction of Texas.*

*Yet the fact is, the rebellion of Texas was wholly achieved by piratical adventurers from the United States, whose government not only permitted, but connived at their inroads; and we see no more reason to regret that Mexico should effect their expulsion, than that Great Britain should have effected the expulsion of similar pirates from Navy Island.