merica is so
glaring, that the philanthropist shudders. Protocols pass; the country
west of the Mississippi is declared to belong first to Mexico, then to
Spain, then to France, then to England, then to the United States. At
last, the United States, strong enough to play a new game, a much more
lofty one than the Tea Tragedy, defies the whole world, issues a
decree irrevocable as those famous ones of the Medes and the
Persians, and, perhaps, equally to pass into oblivion, that all the
New World is to be the property of the descendants of the
Anglo-Saxons--all the New World, never mind whether it be Monarchical
England's, Imperial Brazil, Republican Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, &c.--all
is to be guided by the banner of the Stars and Stripes.

Who among the statesmen ever dreams that the Red Man has any rights,
who ever cares about his property in the wilds of the Prairies, of the
Rocky Mountains, of the unknown lands of the Pacific! The United
States declares that all Northern America is hers from the Atlantic to
the Pacific, and the bloody flag of war is unfurled to obtain the
commencement of this crusade against right and against reason,
although the United States has ten times as much land already as ten
times its present population can fill or cultivate, and then, Oregon
is the war cry,

"Truly to speak it, and with no addition,
We go to gain a little patch of ground,
That hath in it no profit but the name;
To pay five _dollars_, five, I would not farm it;
Two thousand souls and twenty _million dollars_
Will not debate the question of this straw;
This is th' imposthume of much wealth and peace,
That inward breaks, and shows no cause without
Why the man dies--"

and then, in case Oregon should fail, advantage is taken of Mexico's
distractions to negotiate for California.

The Red Man, the poor Red Man, may however have a voice in all this,
that may speak in thunder. He is neither so powerless, nor so utterly
contemptible as is supposed. In the wilds of the West, it is said,
including the roaming horsemen of Mexico, 100,000 warriors exist. Even
against 20,000, what army entangled in the forest, hidden in the
Prairie grass, lost in the wilderness defiles of the vast Andes of the
north, could also exist? and can the American government afford to
detach regular troops for such a dreadful warfare? will the militia
undertake it? Can an American fleet of sufficient power and resources
be kept in the Pacif