\VRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 184,6
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Government, as having no force, on the ground that he had no authority to declare war?-that it belonged only to Congress to declare it? So long as they held that as the rule of their action, so long would they find themselves deceived. So long as he could delude them with professions of peace, so long would he continue those professions, while his acts would continue to be acts of hostility and violence. He had not risen for the purpose of occupying the time of the Senate in any lengthened speech. He would be glad if the bill were put in such a form as would meet the wishes of every honorable Senator. He would be entirely willing to gratify them by first taking up, if they pleased, the subject of appropriation, of furnishing the adequate means for resistance, if he were assured that the declaration of war would promptly follow; but if they were to vote supplies of munitions of war and men for the mere purpose of marching to the Rio del Norte, and there hault- ing, he could not subscribe to any measure of the kind. He could not assent to it, because he thought it would be utterly useless. If they intended to act at all, they ought to act as though they intended to redress the wrongs they had suffered. The policy of declaring war might be discussed for months, and in the mean time our troops would be left to waste away and be destroyed, until only the skeleton of an army would be left, while debts accumulated upon the nation and the Mexicans remained un- chastised. Humiliated as we might regard her, imbecile as were her people, we ought nevertheless to consider her and to treat her as a nation, so long as she was capable of outraging the rights of America. Her degradation should not be allowed to excite in our breasts a feeling of pity; so long as she manifested a disposi- tion to commit outrages upon our country, we should entertain no other feeling than a feeling of resentment; we should not, through a mistaken pity, withhold our hands from inflicting chastisement. Having received wrongs at her hands, it was our duty to redress those wrongs. Injury having been inflicted by Mexico, she ought to be punished. Her insolence ought not to be tolerated. She ought to be made aware that we could not only repel insult, but also punish it. He was prepared to vote for a declaration that we were in a state of war, and the measures necessarily consequent upon such declaration could be immediately adopted and carried into execu- tion. Perhaps the next intelligence received would be that ad- vantage had been taken of our inactivity, and some new outrage
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