Page:Vol 5 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/342

national pride, because the former one had met at Washington, made this a sine qua non — and the king of the Belgians, the choice of the United States minister, was to be the umpire. The United States senate, in utter disregard of the convention, only ratified the treaty with amendments, first striking out of it the right of each government to prefer before the commission any claims or complaints against the other — this point being considered 'strictly diplomatic' — and secondly, changing the place of meeting to Washington, thus ignoring the Mexican stipulation. The mutilated treaty, conditionally ratified, came back to Mexico, the government taking no further notice of it.^[1] Hence the outcry of the friends of Texas that Mexico would not settle the claims against her, and President Polk's assertion that Mexico had thus violated a second time the faith of treaties by failing or refusing to carry into effect the sixth article of the convention of January 1843.^[2] The subject was again before the United States congress in January 1844, when the president laid before the house information on the indemnity to be paid by Mexico.^[3]

 

Mexico's efforts to maintain peace with the United States, by acceding to the settlement of claims on a just basis, only postponed the inevitable and predetermined war. The reader is informed of the unsuccessful attempts of the United States government to acquire by purchase the old province of Texas, which had been surrendered to Spain in 1819. The last expressed wish to this effect, as appears in a despatch to Joel R. Poinsett, its envoy to Mexico, was to obtain the cession of a much larger area, that is to say, the territory extending from the mouth of the Rio Grande along its eastern bank to the 37th parallel of

1. As originally made, it had been ratified by Mexico on the 24th of Nov. 1843. Méx., Derecho Intern., 2d pt, 154-66; Thompson's Recol. Mex., 225-7.
2. Polk's message to congress, Dec. 8, 1846, p. 6.
3. U. S. Govt Doc., Cong. 28, Ses. 1, H. Journ., 167, 198; Id., Cong. 28, Ses. 2, Sen. Journ., 134, 248.