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take up a position in whatever part of the whole Mexican territory he might think proper. The President does indeed charge the general not to allow himself to be deceived by his informers, and to operate in this way only when there should be a moral certa_inty that the Indians are in some way using the Mexican territory in order to prosecute their plans of aggression. But were not the same charges given in different lal\,auage to General Gaines on the 4th of May and the 11th of July, by Mr. Cass, the Secretary of War? We have already seen how far General Gaines was restrained by these charges, and how far his successors are likely to be restrained by them, if they yield, as he did, to the same influences, and allow themselves to be inveigled by the same machinations. And such must certainly be the case, as all the accounts which these commanding generals receive must be derived from a country inimical to Mexico, and must come to them disfigured by rancor and malice. For this reason, the undersigned has always protested, ever since his replies to Mr. Forsyth's memorandum of April 20, against the discretionary power with which the general in command on the frontier had been invested. From his own experience in men and affairs, he was immediately convinced that such a power would sooner or later render its possessor the arbiter of peace or war between Mexico and the United States; and the undersigned was too well aware of the value of the friendship by which the two nations were mutually bound, not to shudder at the idea that all their relations were about to be placed in dependence upon the will or the errors of a single individual. Mr. Dickins explains, and, in his own conception, exculpates the United States, with regard to this great concession of powers, on the ground that, at the distance at which the President was placed from the theatre of war, it would have been impossible for him to provide in any other way for the contingencies which might daily occur. But France was at a distance from the United Stales during the late difficulties between these countries, and very certainly the United States would not at that time have been satisfied, if they had seen that an admiral of Martinique might, by a single act of his, have at his own pleasure broken up the negotiations pending between the two Governments. Would they not have said, and with good reason too, that affairs of such importance involved a higher responsibility than that of one man, whether admiral or general?
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