REMARKS.

IN SENATE, March 23, 1848.

AFTER the morning hour had expired, the galleries, lobbies and floor of the Senate Chamber being densely crowded, Mr. WEBSTER addressed the President and the Senate as follows:

MR. PRESIDENT:

On Friday a bill passed the Senate for raising ten regiments of new troops, for the further prosecution of the war against Mexico, and we have been informed that that measure is shortly to be followed, in this branch of the Legislature, by a bill to raise twenty regiments of volunteers for the same service.

I was desirous of expressing my opinions against the object of these bills, against the supposed necessity which leads to their enactment, and against the general policy which they are apparently designed to promote. Circumstances, personal to myself, but beyond my control, compelled me to forego, on that day, the execution of that design.

The bill now before the Senate, is a measure for raising money, to meet the exigencies of the government and to provide the means, as well as for other things, for the pay and support of these thirty regiments.

Sir, the scenes through which we have passed and are passing here, are various. For a fortnight, the world supposes, we have been occupied with the ratification of a treaty of peace: and that within these walls,

"The world shut out,"

notes of peace and hopes of peace, nay, strong assurances of peace, as well as indications of peace, have been uttered to console and to cheer us. Sir, it has been over and over again stated, and is public, that we have ratified a treaty,— of course, a treaty of peace; and, as the country has been led to suppose, not of an uncertain, empty and delusive peace; but of real and substantial, a gratifying and an enduring peace, a peace which should stanch the wounds of war, prevent the further flow of human blood, cut off these enormous expenses, and return our friends and our brothers, and our children, if they be yet living, from the land of slaughter, and the land of still more dismal destruction by climate, to our firesides and our arms.

Hardly had these cheering and exhilirating notes ceased upon our ears, when,

in resumed public session, we are summoned to fresh warlike operations, to create a new army of thirty thousand men, for the further prosecution of the war, to carry that war, in the language of the President, still more dreadfully into the vital parts of the enemy, and to press home, by fire and sword, the claims we make, the grounds which we insist upon, against our fallen, prostrate, I had almost said our ignoble enemy.

If I may judge from the opening speech of the honorable Senator from Michigan, and from other speeches that have been made upon this floor, there has been no time, from the commencement of the war, when it has been more urgently pressed upon us, not only to maintain, but to increase our military means; not only to continue the war, but to press it still more vigorously than as yet has been done. Pray, what does all this mean? Is it, I ask, confessed then, is it confessed, that we are no nearer a peace than we were, when we snatched up that bit of paper called, or miscalled, a treaty, and ratified it? Have we yet to fight it out to the utmost, as if nothing pacific had intervened?

I wish, sir, to treat the proceedings of this, and of every department of the government, with the utmost respect. God knows that the constitution of this government, and the exercise of its just powers in the administration of the laws under it, have been the cherished object of all my unimportant life. But, if the subject were not one too deeply interesting, I should say our proceedings here might well enough cause a smile. In the ordinary transaction of the foreign relations of this, and of all other governments, the course has been to negotiate first, and to ratify afterwards. This seems to be the natural order of conducting intercourse between foreign States. We have chosen to reverse this order. We ratify first, and negotiate afterwards. We set up a treaty, such as we find it and choose to make it, and then send two Ministers Plenipotentiary to negotiate thereupon in the Capitol of the enemy. One would think, sir, the ordinary course of proceeding much the juster; that to negotiate, to hold intercourse and come to some arrangement, by authorized agents, and then to submit that arrangement to the sovereign authority to which these agents are responsible, would be always the most desirable method of proceeding. It strikes me that the course we have adopted is strange, is grotesque. So far as I know, it is unprecedented in the history of diplomatic intercourse. Learned gentlemen on the floor of the Senate, interested to defend and protect this course, may, in their extensive reading, have found examples of it. I know of none.

Sir, we are in possession, by military power, of New Mexico and California, countries belonging hitherto to the United States of Mexico. We are informed by the President that it is his purpose to retain them, to consider them as territory fit to be attached, and to be attached, to these United States of America. And our military operations and designs now before the Senate, are to enforce this claim of the Executive of the United States. We are to compel Mexico to agree, that the part of her dominion called New Mexico, and the other called California, shall be ceded to us; that we are in possession, as is said, and that she shall yield her title to us. This is the precise object of this new army of 30,000 men. Sir, it is the identical object, in my judgment, for which the war was originally commenced, for which it has hitherto been prosecuted, and in furtherance of which this treaty is to be used, but as one means to bring about the general result, that general result depending, after all, on our own superior power, and on the necessity of submitting to any terms which we may prescribe to fallen, fallen, fallen Mexico!

Sir, the members composing the other House, the more popular branch