BRITISH AGGRESSION IN CENTRAL AMERICA.... THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE AMERICAN UNION.... By A. B. JOHNSON. THE TREASURY.-First Report of the Secretary of the Treasury...... POLITICAL PORTRAITS WITH PEN AND PENCIL: Major Gen. AARON WARD, New-York.. Hon. THOMAS B. FLORENCE, Pennsylvania. LAWRENCE KEARNEY, United States Navy.... GEORGE W. WRIGHT, M. C., California.... CHARLES STEWART, United States Navy.. WILLIAM DARRAH KELLEY. IMPROMPTU ON HEARING JENNY LIND................. FINANCIAL AND COMMERCIAL REVIEW.............................81, 178, 282, 366, 465, 561 OURSELVES..... .93, 189, 382 FREE-TRADE.-THE PAST, PRESENT AND THE FUTURE.-HARMONY OF INTERESTS, &c..... JOHN RANDOLPH.-Life of John Randolph, of Roanoke... BY HUGH A. GARLAND. 97 119, 209 THE NAVY.-Annual Report of the Secretary of the Navy...... 155 THE "FINE YOUNG ENGLISH GENTLEMAN ABROAD, AND THE FINE OLD YANKEE STATESMAN AT HOME: OR, SECRETS WORTH KNOWING," FOUND OUT..... 161 THE DECLINE OF ENGLAND.-LA DECADENCE DE L'ANGLETERRE... 229 BY LEDRU ROLLIN. THE VETO POWER OF THE PRESIDENT.... BY A. B. JOHNSON. THE AMICABLE AND THE AMIABLE IN ENGLISH POLICY..... THE LAST OF THE PIQUODS..... NEW-YORK FINANCES.... THIRTY-FIRST CONGRESS.. UNCLE SAM AND HIS B'BOYS...... LINES WRITTEN AT THE GIANT'S CAUSEWAY. CARNOT.... THE LAND OF THE CHEROKEE.. BY R. LACY, of Tennessee. ADMIRALS.............. 243 247. 254 259 270 289 299 304 305 320 332 PROPOSAL TO ESTABLISH ONE UNIFORM SYSTEM OF WEIGHTS, MEASURES AND COINS... BY P. A. BROWNE, LL.D., of Philadelphia. THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW; SHALL IT BE ENFORCED?.......... EULOGY ON COLONEL RICHARD M. JOHNSON.... BY THE HON. C. MATHER. CONSTITUTIONAL COMPROMISES. FALLACIES OF LEGISLATION...... LORD HOLLAND'S FOREIGN REMINISCENCES... THE ENGLISH IN CEYLON... GEOGRAPHICAL MORALITY.. BY CORA MONTGOMERY. PARIS.... THE PODESTA'S DAUGHTER.. BY THE EDITOR. 335 352 376 385 394 401 409 413 416 417 Life of ALGERNON SIDNEY, with Sketches of some of his Contemporaries. THE PARRICIDES OF THE REPUBLIC..... AMERICAN ARCHEOLOGY.... ENGLISH SLAVERY.. TOURISTS AT HOME AND ABROAD.. REEDYRILL.................. SENATOR DOUGLAS....... JENNY LIND.... 481 ... 494 500 512 521 528 532 566 569 BRITISH AGGRESSION IN CENTRAL AMERICA. THE Mosquito question is yet unsettled. The basis of the settlement, as far as the present imperfect arrangement is entitled to the name, is disgraceful to American statesmanship, or indicative of American treachery, in the sentiments of the officials to whose hands the fate, fortunes and honor of the republic are committed. That there is abundant evidence of contemptible incapacity and ignorance, or of criminal indifference to the highest interests of the Union, in the late halting, and truckling, and crooked diplomacy of the Government, will sufficiently appear from a recapitulation of its leading facts. These we mean to submit to the people of the States in their sovereign capacity. But as the question, now more immediately in issue, is of a correlative character; and as it moreover involves important considerations, historical, statistical, juridical and international, it is indispensable to present to our readers a condensed resumé of the successive aggressions by which England has acquired her present foothold in Mosquito, Belize and Costa Rica, whereby she assumes the control and protectorship of the great projected "highway of nations," and dictates such modifications of a treaty between the United States and the republic of Nicaragua as may suit her own haughty pretensions. It seems to be no longer agitated, whether she shall continue to protect the squalid nationality of some few hundred illegitimate sava ges, born of indiscriminate concubinage, and leprous from a commixture of every impure blood, to whom she alternately administers crowns, Christianity and Jamaica rum; or whether she shall, by her agents, inflame international strife between Costa Rica and Nicaragua, or maintain her fraudulent hold of Belize; but whether she shall not dictate the terms of an international treaty, solemnly sanctioned by the Government of Nicaragua and our own. The former questions would seem to be only incidental now, and entitled to review as ancillary to the hold which Britain has obtained, and by which she justifies her insulting pretensions. But, considered even in that view, it will be seen that every one of them comes within the range of the future action and decision of the republic, unless she shall be so far betrayed as to abdicate her functions of Govern ment, and confer on an English plenipotentiary the power to ratify or reject her treaties of amity and commerce with other American nations. For it is scarcely concealed that Mr. Bulwer's object, in seeking to modify the terms of the Nicaragua treaty, is to justify his Government in giving a construction to the Clayton treaty, which no American of any party would accept when that treaty was ratified. We e now proceed with our historical sketch. Nicaragua was discovered by Columbus, and taken possession of by him in the name of the crown of Spain. It is a singular fact, that this possession was formally taken of the Atlantic coast; and the extension of the settlement to the shores of the Pacific was only an assertion of the right acquired by the title claimed over the now disputed territory of Mosquito. Local advantages determined the choice of the settlers, but the right over the whole country remained undivided and indisputable. The claim of England to Virginia was not more settled or sacred than that of Spain to Central America, from shore to shore. England's assertion now is, that the Mosquito country was always free; that the Indians of the coast never recognized the authority of Spain. No doubt they did not; and if the recognition of the Indians be requisite, what valid title to one spot of the American continent is in existence? Either the assertion of Lord Palmerston is a wilful falsehood, or the title of England to Canada and Oregon is a fraudulent usurpation. Discovery is the only title to land in America, as between the different European nations. This doctrine has been solemnly affirmed by courts of justice, recognized in international treaties, and sanctioned by all European Governments. Upon it rests the claim of those Governments to the sovereign dominion of the discovered countries, subject only to the bare occupancy of the Indians. How far the denial of their rights was a usurpation, this is not the place to discuss. But be it robbery or justice, it was a common bond between the nations of Europe. An able judge, pre-eminent in learning, and distinguished for an everlasting attachment to the British constitution, thus enumerates it: "The different nations of Europe claimed and exercised the power to grant the soil while yet in possession of the natives. *** That right never has been doubted, and any attempt of others to intrude, would be considered an aggression which would justify war. When Lord Palmerston denies this, which he daringly does, he not alone controverts the solemn decision of a great jurist, but questions the coustitution of his country, and falsifies her sovereign claim to the colonies she has lost, and those she has preserved. But in this case a broader fraud was needful, and Lord Palmerston is not the man to stumble at it. He not only had to trample on the law, and the rights of other nations, but on the pledged faith and honor of his own, Of the dominion of Spain over the Mosquito territory, here is his Lordship's emphatic repudiation: "But I deny totally and entirely that Spain had any right to the Mosquito territory. On the contrary, the King of the Mosquitos has, from a very early period in the history of America, been an independent ruler of a separate territory, and he has been invariably upheld and acknowledged by the Government of Great Britain." * Chief Justice Marshall, in Johnson vs. McIntosh, 8 Wheaton. |