87
WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1858
repository, since the securing of indemnities for outrages has become a somewhat obsolete idea. Those grievances are doubt- less magnified in a pecuniary point of view, as grievances ever are where a Government is responsible; but still, there should be an authority in Mexico, with which they may be adjusted and provided for, as ascertained to be valid. The claimants might select one commissioner for their examination, Mexico another; and, in case of disagreement, the two an umpire. So with the inhabitants of other countries, who have experienced wrongs at her hands which have not been redressed. With respect to her funded debt, it amounts to about fifty-five million dollars, and is chiefly owned in England and on the continent. It was con- solidated in 1846, by a convention between the Government of Mexico and a committee of the bondholders, by which it was to bear five per cent coupon interest. The war in which Mexico became involved with the United States, so enfeebled her that she was unable to provide the interest or a single dividend of it, until some time along in 1850, when she sent a commissioner to London to represent the state of her finances and to make a new proposal to her ,creditors. This proposal was to the end that she would pay out of the California indemnity money the inter- est in arrears, and pledge one-fourth of the custom-house re- ceipts on imports ~s well as exports for the payment of the future interest of the debt-provided the bondholders would agree to diminish the rate of interest from five to three per cent. To this, after some hesitation, they consented. Since then, such is the faithlessness with which she has acted, and such the subter- fuge that she has had to resort to, in orde·r to sustain her sickly · existence, that she has appropriated to herself nearly all the customs dues received-having remitted only a sufficient amount to pay four of the semi-annual three per cent, interest dividends which have since matured. With this arrangement, to which Mexico is bound, we could not interfere, as her protector, unless with the assent of the bondholders. It might, however, probably be modified to their own and her advantage. The assumption of it by this Government, as a consequence of the protectorate, is too idle a supposition to be entertained. Great Britain could not expect more from us in the premises, than to see that the portion of the revenue from the customs stipulated for, was reg- ularly placed at the disposal of those bondholders when col- lected. This would in all likelihood defray the interest as it accrued, besides creating a sinking fund for the absorption, in a few years, of the principal, and thus extricate the hand of
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