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TEX.AS STATE LIBRARY
l-nown in Mexico, which it soon would be through certain newspapers in this country, that ·every member of Congress but one had united in a letter to President Tyler, saying that they and nine-tenths of the people of Texas were in favor of annexation, that the Mexican authori- ties then withdrew their original draft as proposed, and substituted the one signed at Sabinas, which regards Texas as a Department of Mexico. Instead of virtually acknowledging our independence as they did in the first one, and thereby depriving themselves of all right to interfere with the question of annexation, they found it necessary to revive their old pretensions to jurisdiction, and succeeded in obtaining from our Commissioners the "Commission of Armistice," which is now being used so successfully in the papers in the Mexican and British interest in the United States and here as well as in· Mexico, to defeat the treaty. That the Mexican government procured it for that very purpose and no other, and that our Commissioners knew that they had no authority to make it, there can be no doubt when their instructions are looked into: and whether they acted with the same innocent dis- regard to consequences as the members of the Hon. Congress did, we cannot say. They have credit among us for understanding right well how to adapt means to ends, if the Congress have not: and the Armistice is now using by the Mexican Minister at Washington, and in the National Intelligencer in an able article on it, as presenting a very serious ob- stacle to annexation. Perhaps they preferred independence to annex- ation: and if they did it must have been a matter of sore disappoint- ment to them to see it snatched from their grasp by this act of des- perate folly on the part of those members of Congress, whom we hon- estly believe never dreamed of the mischief they were doing. The precaution taken in the draft of the Armistice published to-day, to confine the Mexican and Texian troops to the western side of the Rio Grande and the eastern side of the Nueces, was intended to prevent danger of collision; and was in that respect very judicious, and could not in any manner draw into controversy the question of boundary. The News and Telegraph seem to be publishing with great satis- faction certain correspondence between Bocanegra and Mr. Doyle, in which much is sai·d about the "sovereignty" of Mexico as a basis for negociations, and the propositions made through "the lawyer Robinson." Now the Mexicans and British have always been much taken with a sort ·of Oriental style in the official designation of their correspondence. It is not long since the King of England was called "King of England, France and Ireland :" and yet we believe the harmless vanity of the gasconade, for such it was for at least a century before it was dropped, never occasioned much unhappiness to the monarchs of France, or their subjects: and if M. Bocanegra bad seen fit to style his illustrious mas- ter as they do in the Eastern countries, "Father to the Sun" and "Uncle to the Moon," we do not see that we need feel uneasy about it: our own little star would not shine less brightly. Besides, a government that finds so much favor as Santa Anna's does in certain of our newspapers which pubfo:h his official correspondence, whether by authority or n?t, as they <lo our own we cannot say, may well justify itself in the behef that it is yet "sovereign" in some quarters in Texas. We see in some of the papers that Gen. Santa ~nna sreaks of a "Mr. Houston" here, as a name quite strange to him. \\ e are sur-
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