WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1858
85
no effectual restraint. On account of the depredations incessantly perpetrated by the Comanches and the other tribes upon the Mexicans, the border population is steadily receding into the interior; and jnstead of progressive civilization, the chances mul- tiply, from day to day, that the country will be turned over to barbarism-to the savages now within our own limits. Mexico cannot prevent it, because she is never free from civil war or other intestine commotions; and we cannot, at any cost short of hermetically sealing our frontier. Thus good neighborhood on either part, as matters at present stand, is next to an impossi- bility. The one cannot repel, and the other cannot pursue. The wild Indian in his forest wanderings has no respect for, if he even had a knowledge of, the lines which separate civilized nations. He roams wherever his untutored mind points the way, making in his strides the powerless-whether the white or red man-his victim. Different-vastly different-is the condition of the neighborhood on our northern frontier. The inhabitants of the British Provinces are so assimilated in character and iden- tified in interests with the inhabitants of the northern States, that they are much the same as if they constituted one people.. Practically, there is nothing but a political line of division be- tween them. The Marcy-Elgin treaty 2 cemented their intercourse, and commercially annexed the Canadas, and other adjacent pos- sessions of Queen Victoria, to those States. We gave to the col- onies everything that they asked-everything that they could have desired. The Senator from New York told me, the other day, in sub- stance, that the North was mighty, and that it would speedily become still mightier. In the majesty of its power it may, at no distant day, bring those colonies into the Union, and particularly if they should become dissatisfied with the rule of the mother country. Nor can it be pleaded that they are not prepared for admission. Every day that passes-such is the frequency of their communication· with the citizens of Michigan, New York, and New England-they 1·eceive practical lessons in the science of self-government, adopting, of course, the tenets of anti-slavery. Their number does not greatly exceed a third of that of Mexico, and yet they probably contribute ten times as much to the pros- perity of the North as Mexico does to the prosperity of the South. I do not mention this in the language of sectional complaint; but in justification of the measure I propose. The notion, sir, that Mexico will ever help herself out of the extremities to which she has been so deplorably reduced, is too
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