Page:Vol 6 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/483

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PEACE AND GOOD-WILL.
463

pose the sale of a portion of their territory would be liable to overthrow. It is true that in the northern states the holders of great tracts of land, and no few of the wealthier class, are favorably disposed to annexation to the United States, but they form but a small proportion of the mass of the population. The imaginary necessity, too, for the sale of territory, has disappeared under the able financial reforms effected by Diaz, and it is to be hoped that the day may never arrive when the counsels of unprincipled men shall prevail. Under such administrations as the present one, the yearly increasing intercourse between the two nations, and the mutual commercial advantages to be derived by peace and reciprocal comity, jealousy and apprehension will cease on the one side, and arrogant pretensions on the other.[1]

  1. The principal authorities used in writing the five preceding chapters are government documents and official papers, and the works of Mexican writers of the period. Of the latter, notice must be made of —

    Derecho Internacional Mexicano, Mex., 1878-9, 4°, 3 pts, i. p. vii. and 707; ii. 408 pp.; iii. 1174 pp. A compilation made by José Fernandez, chief clerk of the department of relations of Mexico, and approved by the executive, of all treaties and conventions entered into by Mexico with other powers from 1821 to 1878. In the first part are those concluded and ratified by the contracting parties; annexed to the respective ones are important documents, such as conferences and treaties of Spain with other nations affecting Mexico. In the 2.1 part are treaties made but not ratified by the Mexican republic, with an appendix containing several important documents. The appendix includes, among other papers, several treaties entered into by Maximilian, the ratifications of which were never exchanged; and like all acts emanating from the empire, they were declared null by the legitimate government of Mexico. The 31 part contains laws and regulations on matters of a general nature; viz., commercial agents, admiralty, antiquities, archives, national arms, public lands, bulls, naturalization and citizenship, foreign relations, ceremonials, penal code, colonization, foreign debt, and many other subjects of more or less interest to foreigners. The typographical work is very fair.

    Correspondencia Diplomática cambiada entre el gobierno de los Estudos Unidos Mexicanos y los de varias potencias extranjeras. Mexico, 1882, 1. 4°, 2 vol., i. 993 PP., 51; ii. 726 pp., 31. Contains all the diplomatic correspondence that occurred between the government of Mexico and the governments of foreign powers from July 1, 1878, to June 30, 1881, with annexes, some of which are of earlier dates. A part of the correspondence appearing in many of the affairs contained in the work is not, properly speaking, of a diplomatic nature, but internal, having taken place between authorities of Mexico; but the compiler, José Fernandez, chief clerk of the department of relations, thought proper to insert it for the reason that much of the matter in it refers to a critical period of Mexican international relations.

    Datos Biográficos del General de Division C. Porfirio Diaz con Acopio de Documentos Históricos. Mexico, 1884. Fol., p. 247, with portrait. This work contains data for the biography of General Diaz from his birth to the