320 LESTER BURRELL SHIPPEE able to obtain for us through her influence in Mexico; and this was but a dream of policy which was never embodied." 15 It is not necessary to go with Adams all the way in viewing Webster's "gigantic political profligacy," but certainly we are afforded light on the course which some leading Whigs would have adopted had they had the power. Compromise to pre- vent the outburst of any one faction, conciliation to tide over issues, such as marked the course of the Whig party from the beginning, appear here in the tangled web of the politics of the 'Forties. The South wished more territory to afford slave expansion; the North opposed such a plan. Annexation of Texas would not only arouse the antagonism of the more radical elements of the North but it threatened to jeopardize the profits of the conservative commercial and manufacturing classes by possible international complications. But both the North and the South might conceivably be won if a cession from Mexico could be obtained and at the same time produce no stringency in the relations with Great Britain. The Whig, however, was willing to let the West pay the bill, if we can take Webster's testimony, for Great Britain was to be con- soled by being allowed to reach south to the Columbia and so would probably interpose no objections to American expansion at the expense of Mexico. While western men could not lay a finger upon the specific fact which would prove their sus- picion, they felt that there was the intention to sacrifice what they had come to look upon as peculiarly their interest, and consequently they were bitter in their denunciation of the eastern treachery to their cause. 16 The Democratic party took the same elements and turned them about. Although this party appeared more rent by internal dissension than its opponent, its leaders had the political penetration to enable them to gauge more accurately the political tension and to snatch a victory through a daring 15 Tyler to R. Tyler, n Dec., 1845, Ibid., 447-8. 1 6 Benton (Thirty Years' View, II, 624-5) says in speaking of the defeat of the Senate resolution in 1844: "Upon all this talk of war the commercial interest became seriously alarmed, and looked upon the delivery of the notice as a signal for disastrous depression in our foreign trade. In a word the general uneasiness became so great that there was no chance for doing what we had a right to do, etc." The relation of Great Britain to the United States-Mexican affairs is treated by E. D. Adams, British interests and activities in Mexico, 1838-1846.
