the letter of the Secretary of State to the minister for foreign
affairs of Mexico, and was in possession of the Mexican Government
during the whole period the treaty was before the Mexican Congress; and
the article itself was reprobated in that letter in the strongest terms.
Besides, our commissioners to Mexico had been instructed that--

Neither the President nor the Senate of the United States can ever
consent to ratify any treaty containing the tenth article of the treaty
of Guadalupe Hidalgo, in favor of grantees of land in Texas or
elsewhere.

And again:

Should the Mexican Government persist in retaining this article, then
all prospect of immediate peace is ended; and of this you may give
them an absolute assurance.

On this point the language of the protocol is free from ambiguity, but
if it were otherwise is there any individual American or Mexican who
would place such a construction upon it as to convert it into a vain
attempt to revive this article, which had been so often and so solemnly
condemned? Surely no person could for one moment suppose that either the
commissioners of the United States or the Mexican minister for foreign
affairs ever entertained the purpose of thus setting at naught the
deliberate decision of the President and Senate, which had been
communicated to the Mexican Government with the assurance that their
abandonment of this obnoxious article was essential to the restoration
of peace.

But the meaning of the protocol is plain. It is simply that the
nullification of this article was not intended to destroy valid,
legitimate titles to land which existed and were in full force
independently of the provisions and without the aid of this article.
Notwithstanding it has been expunged from the treaty, these grants were
to "preserve the legal value which they may possess." The refusal to
revive grants which had become extinct was not to invalidate those which
were in full force and vigor. That such was the clear understanding of
the Senate of the United States, and this in perfect accordance with the
protocol, is manifest from the fact that whilst they struck from the
treaty this unjust article, they at the same time sanctioned and
ratified the last paragraph of the eighth article of the treaty, which
declares that--

In the said territories property of every kind now belonging to Mexicans
not established there shall be inviolably respected. The present owners,
th