fail to arrest your attention.  Such remonstrance, urged in no unfriendly spirit to Mexico, was called for by considerations of an imperative character, having relation as well to the peace of this country and honor of this Government as to the cause of humanity and civilization.  Texas had entered into the treaty of annexation upon the invitation of the Executive, and when for that act she was threatened with a renewal of the war on the part of Mexico she naturally looked to this Government to interpose its efforts to ward off the threatened blow.  But one course was left the Executive, acting within the limits of its constitutional competency, and that was to protest in respectful, but at the same time strong and decided, terms against it.  The war thus threatened to be renewed was promulgated by edicts and decrees, which ordered on the part of the Mexican military the desolation of whole tracts of country and the destruction without discrimination of all ages, sexes, and conditions of existence.  Over the manner of conducting war Mexico possesses no exclusive control.  She has no right to violate at pleasure the principles which an enlightened civilization has laid down for the conduct of nations at war, and thereby retrograde to a period of barbarism, which happily for the world has long since passed away.  All nations are interested in enforcing an observance of those principles, and the United States, the oldest of the American Republics and the nearest of the civilized powers to the theater on which these enormities were proposed to be enacted, could not quietly content themselves to witness such a state of things.  They had through the Executive on another occasion, and, as was believed, with the approbation of the whole country, remonstrated against outrages similar but even less inhuman than those which by her new edicts and decrees she has threatened to perpetrate, and of which the late inhuman massacre at Tabasco was but the precursor.

The bloody and inhuman murder of Fannin and his companions, equaled only in savage barbarity by the usages of the untutored Indian tribes, proved how little confidence could be placed on the most solemn stipulations of her generals, while the fate of others who became her captives in war—­many of whom, no longer able to sustain the fatigues and privations of long journeys, were shot down by the wayside, while their companions who survived were subjected to sufferings even more painful than death—­had left an indelible stain on the page of civilization.  The Executive, with the evidence of an intention on the part of Mexico to renew scenes so revolting to humanity, could do no less than renew remonstrances formerly urged.  For fulfilling duties so imperative Mexico has thought proper, through her accredited organs, because she has had represented to her the inhumanity of such proceedings, to indulge in language unknown to the courtesy of diplomatic intercourse and offensive in the highest degree to this Government and people.