st degree to this Government and people. Nor has she
offended in this only. She has not only violated existing conventions
between the two countries by arbitrary and unjust decrees against our
trade and intercourse, but withholds installments of debt due to our
citizens which she solemnly pledged herself to pay under circumstances
which are fully explained by the accompanying letter from Mr. Green, our
secretary of legation. And when our minister has invited the attention
of her Government to wrongs committed by her local authorities, not only
on the property but on the persons of our fellow-citizens engaged in
prosecuting fair and honest pursuits, she has added insult to injury
by not even deigning for months together to return an answer to his
representations. Still further to manifest her unfriendly feelings
toward the United States, she has issued decrees expelling from some
of her Provinces American citizens engaged in the peaceful pursuits of
life, and now denies to those of our citizens prosecuting the whale
fishery on the northwest coast of the Pacific the privilege, which has
through all time heretofore been accorded to them, of exchanging goods
of a small amount in value at her ports in California for supplies
indispensable to their health and comfort.

Nor will it escape the observation of Congress that in conducting a
correspondence with a minister of the United States, who can not and
does not know any distinction between the geographical sections of the
Union, charges wholly unfounded are made against particular States, and
an appeal to others for aid and protection against supposed wrongs. In
this same connection, sectional prejudices are attempted to be excited
and the hazardous and unpardonable effort is made to foment divisions
amongst the States of the Union and thereby imbitter their peace. Mexico
has still to learn that however freely we may indulge in discussion
among ourselves, the American people will tolerate no interference in
their domestic affairs by any foreign government, and in all that
concerns the constitutional guaranties and the national honor the people
of the United States have but one mind and one heart.

The subject of annexation addresses itself, most fortunately, to every
portion of the Union. The Executive would have been unmindful of its
highest obligations if it could have adopted a course of policy dictated
by sectional interests and local feelings. On the contrary, it was
b