r treaty with Mexico. The treaty is merely
commercial and intended as the instrument for more accurately defining
the rights and securing the interests of the citizens of each country.
What bad faith can be implied or charged upon the Government of the
United States for successfully negotiating with an independent power
upon any subject not violating the stipulations of such treaty I confess
my inability to discern.

The objections which have been taken to the enlargement of our territory
were urged with much zeal against the acquisition of Louisiana, and yet
the futility of such has long since been fully demonstrated. Since that
period a new power has been introduced into the affairs of the world,
which has for all practical purposes brought Texas much nearer to the
seat of Government than Louisiana was at the time of its annexation.
Distant regions are by the application of the steam engine brought
within a close proximity.

With the views which I entertain on the subject, I should prove
faithless to the high trust which the Constitution has devolved upon me
if I neglected to invite the attention of the representatives of the
people to it at the earliest moment that a due respect for the Senate
would allow me so to do. I should find in the urgency of the matter a
sufficient apology, if one was wanting, since annexation is to encounter
a great, if not certain, hazard of final defeat if something be not
_now_ done to prevent it. Upon this point I can not too impressively
invite your attention to my message of the 16th of May and to the
documents which accompany it, which have not heretofore been made
public. If it be objected that the names of the writers of some of the
private letters are withheld, all that I can say is that it is done
for reasons regarded as altogether adequate, and that the writers are
persons of the first respectability and citizens of Texas, and have such
means of obtaining information as to entitle their statements to full
credit. Nor has anything occurred to weaken, but, on the contrary, much
to confirm, my confidence in the statements of General Jackson, and
my own statement, made at the close of that message, in the belief,
amounting almost to certainty, "that instructions have already been
given by the Texan Government to propose to the Government of Great
Britain, forthwith on the failure [of the treaty], to enter into a
treaty of commerce and an alliance offensive and defensive."

I also