What may we expect from him as to the _Mexican War_? This brings me to a melancholy inquiry, on which I am the less disposed to dwell because it has already been so fully considered. Will he ascend to the heights of a true civilization, and, while branding the war as unjust, call at once for its cessation, and the withdrawal of our forces? There is no reason to believe that he will. He voted for the Act of Congress under which it is now waged, and by that disastrous vote made his constituents partakers in a wicked and bloody war. At a later day, in an elaborate speech,[200] he vindicated his action, and promised "not to withhold his vote from any reasonable supplies which may be called for" in the prosecution of the war,--adding, that he should vote for them "to enable the President to achieve that _honorable peace_ which he has solemnly promised to bring about at the earliest possible moment" _by the sword_. And, pray, what is Mr. Winthrop's idea of an "honorable peace"? Is it peace imposed upon a weak neighbor by brute force, the successful consummation of unrighteous war? Is it the triumph of wrong? Is it the Saturnalia of Slavery? Is it the fruit of sin? Is it a baptism of blood unjustly shed? In the same speech, with grievous insensibility to the sordid character of the suggestion, he pleads for the maintenance of the old Tariff, as necessary to meet "the exigencies" of the Mexican War. "In a time of war, like the present, more especially," he says, "_an ample revenue should be the primary aim and end of all our custom-house duties_." Perish manufactures, let me rather say, if the duties by which they seem to be protected are swollen to feed "the exigencies" of unjust war! Afterwards, at Faneuil Hall, before the Whig Convention, he shows a similar insensibility. Nowhere does he sound the word _Duty_. Nowhere does he tell his country to begin by doing right. Nowhere does he give assurance of aid by calling for the instant stay of the war. [200] Speech on the Tariff, June 25, 1846. There are those who, admitting that his vote was a mistake, say that we are not to judge him on this account. Can we afford to send a representative who can make such a mistake? But it is a mistake never by him acknowledged as such. It is still persisted in, and hugged. Among the last words of warning from the lips of Chatham, as he fell at his post in the British Senate, almost his dying words, were "against co-operation with men who still persist in unretracted error."