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Page:A Study of Mexico.djvu/83

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INJUSTICE OF THE MEXICAN WAR.
73

them, "See what a great and valiant man I am, and how I desire that my children should imitate my example!" If it is peace and amity and political influence, and extended trade and markets, and a maintenance of the Monroe doctrine on the American Continent that we are after, such an act would do more to win the hearts and dispel the fears and suspicions of the people of Mexico, and of all the states of Central and South America, than reams of diplomatic correspondence, and endless traveling trade commissioners and formal international resolutions. Society is said to be bound by laws that always bring vengeance upon it for wrong-doing—"the vengeance of the gods, whose mills grind slow, but grind exceeding small." What penalty is to be exacted of the great North American Republic for its harsh treatment and spoliation of poor, down-trodden, ignorant, superstitious, debt-ridden Mexico, time alone can reveal. Perhaps, as this great wrong was committed at the promptings or demand of the then dominant slave-power, the penalty has been already exacted and included in the general and bloody atonement which the country has made on account of slavery. Perhaps, under the impelling force of the so-called "manifest destiny," a further penalty is to come, in the form of an equal and integral incorporation of Mexico and her foreign people into the Federal