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WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1858
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the Senate should resume consideration of Senate Bill No. 65, to authorize the President of the United States to contract for the transportation of the mails, troops, seamen, munitions of war, and all other government service by railroad from Missouri River to San Francisco in the State of California; the pending question being on an amendment offered by Mr. Dolittle to strike out of the amendment of Mr. Polk the words "or in the western boundary of the State of Missouri, or of the State of Arkansas, between the mouth of the Big Sioux River," and insert "between Breckinridge, at the confluence of the Bois des Sioux with the mouth of the Red River of the North, on the western boundary of Minnesota."
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FAVORING A PROTECTORATE OVER MEXIC0 1
April 20, 1858. ~r. Houston. Mr. President, it will be recollected that a few weeks ago I offered a resolution to instruct the Committee on Foreign Relations to inquire into the expediency of establishing a protectorate over Mexico and the Central American States by this Government. That resolution, without being amply discussed, was laid upon the table. I have risen for the purpose of proposing a substitute for it, by which the inquiry shall be confined to Mexico, and submitted to a select committee. It is, perhaps, nothing more than respectful to Great Britain, inasmuch as we have been negotiating with her for several years in relation to Honduras and the Mosquito shore, that the differ- ences between the two countries should be amicably adjusted, if possible, before we proceed to intervene for the regulation of the affairs of the five puny States beyond Mexico. Moreover, the con- dition of most of those States, bad as it is, is incalculably better than that of our poor, distracted, adjoining neighbor. Their pub- lic demoralization, too, affects us less injuriously. The State, sir, which I have enjoyed the honor of represent- ing in this Chamber, in part, with my lost but unforgotten col- league, since the emblem of her national independence took its place among the galaxy of stars which is unfurled over our heads, has a paramount interest in the establishment of orderly government in Mexico. It is as essential to her public morality and general prosperity as is that of any one State in the Union to another. The line of partition between the United States and Mexico stretches nearly two thousand miles-one thousand of which is Texan. Along a considerable portion of that line, on our side, savages abound-over whose propensities for the commis- sion of crime on the inhabitants-on the other side, we can exer- cise, although obligated by solemn treaty stipulations to do so,
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