Many serious wrongs against the property, many irreparable wrongs against the persons of Americans have been committed within the territory of Mexico herself during this confused revolution, wrongs which could not be effectually checked so long as there was no constituted power in Mexico which was in a position to check them.  We could not act directly in that matter ourselves without denying Mexicans the right to any revolution at all which disturbed us and making the emancipation of her own people await our own interest and convenience.

For it is their emancipation that they are seeking,—­blindly, it may be, and as yet ineffectually, but with profound and passionate purpose and within their unquestionable right, apply what true American principle you will,—­any principle that an American would publicly avow.  The people of Mexico have not been suffered to own their own country or direct their own institutions.  Outsiders, men out of other nations and with interests too often alien to their own, have dictated what their privileges and opportunities should be and who should control their land, their lives, and their resources,—­some of them Americans, pressing for things they could never have got in their own country.  The Mexican people are entitled to attempt their liberty from such influences; and so long as I have anything to do with the action of our great Government I shall do everything in my power to prevent anyone standing in their way.  I know that this is hard for some persons to understand; but it is not hard for the plain people of the United States to understand.  It is hard doctrine only for those who wish to get something for themselves out of Mexico.  There are men, and noble women, too, not a few, of our own people, thank God! whose fortunes are invested in great properties in Mexico who yet see the case with true vision and assess its issues with true American feeling.  The rest can be left for the present out of the reckoning until this enslaved people has had its day of struggle towards the light.  I have heard no one who was free from such influences propose interference by the United States with the internal affairs of Mexico.  Certainly no friend of the Mexican people has proposed it.

The people of the United States are capable of great sympathies and a noble pity in dealing with problems of this kind.  As their spokesman and representative, I have tried to act in the spirit they would wish me show.  The people of Mexico are striving for the rights that are fundamental to life and happiness,—­15,000,000 oppressed men, overburdened women, and pitiful children in virtual bondage in their own home of fertile lands and inexhaustible treasure!  Some of the leaders of the revolution may often have been mistaken and violent and selfish, but the revolution itself was inevitable and is right.  The unspeakable Huerta betrayed the very comrades he served, traitorously overthrew the government of which he was a trusted