results by issuing letters of marque, and the regulations of July, 1846, were intended principally or wholly to annoy this country; but in September and October she took the matter up rather seriously. A new law provided that any foreigner entering her naval service might become a Mexican at once, and blank naturalization papers as well as thousands of privateering commissions, duly signed but not filled out, were carried by agents to the West Indies, Great Britain, France and Spain. Almonte did his' best at Havana. J. N. Pareda, appointed Mexican chargé d'affaires at Madrid, appears to have circulated the documents actively in the Peninsular ports; and another privateer, a Spanish steamer named La Rosita, put out from Oran.[1]
On the other hand, the representatives of the United States insisted upon our treaties and the obligations of neutrality. Polk's annual Message of December, 1846, denounced the Mexican plan as inviting "all the freebooters upon earth," who felt like paying for the privilege, to cruise aganist American commerce, announced that our own courts would say whether such papers could protect them from the pirate's doom, recommended that Congress provide at once for the trial of Spanish subjects caught in such business, and suggested American privateers — intended mainly to recapture vessels taken under Mexican letters. An American force hastened to the Mediterranean, and our squadrons were expected to seize all the rovers putting out, as well as intercept all prizes on their way to the enemy's ports. These precautions looked rather discouraging to enterprising desperadoes.[2]
In England there was a feeling, as will appear later, that Mexico should be allowed the utmost license against us, and the Mexican minister at London received many applications for letters; but Great Britain did not really wish her supplies of cotton to be endangered, and all the seas to be filled with corsairs preying upon the trade of the world; and in October, 1845, her minister to Mexico was instructed to prevent that country, if he could, from issuing letters of marque indiscriminately. Bankhead protested also, as did the Spanish minister, against important features of the regulations. Palmerston himself, though he acted in a languid fashion, and gave notice at Washington that British subjects, found on
