“The United States may find that they are brought squarely to the issue in the Mexican question sooner than they expected, should the report, lately reached here, of any understanding between Maximilian, as so-called Emperor of Mexico, and the insurgents in this country, prove correct. The archduke, it is stated, will inaugurate his administration by acknowledging the independence of the South, and, perhaps, he will go further; and this, of course, by the advice, consent and support of the French Government, whose satellite, and nothing else, will the archduke be in Mexico. “Among the many events calculated to terminate immediately French intervention in Mexico, the European complications which threaten to cause a general war on that continent should be particularly mentioned. It is certainly wonderful that while Europe is in so insecure and agitated a condition, menaced by revolutions everywhere, and wrestling to recover its own existence and independence, the French Emperor should be thinking about arranging other people’s affairs, as if his own did not require his immediate and most particular attention.” Mr. George Bancroft, the eminent historian, was next called upon to reply to the toast, “The Eminent Statesmen of Mexico,” among whom the chair named Guatimotzin, Hidalgo, Morelos, Ocampo, Lerdo and Degollado. Mr. Bancroft said: MR. BANCROFT. GENTLEMEN—Although I am not prepared to deliver an address worthy of this auditory, I can not refrain from replying and expressing my sentiments, as I have been called to reply to the toast which our president has just proposed to the statesmen of our neighboring sister republic. The struggle which for many long years the Mexican people have sustained against their interior tyrants has been an heroic struggle, worthy of a civilized and cultivated people, and in which the sympathies of the whole civilized world—of all the friends of political and religious liberty—ought to have been manifested in a frank and decided manner in behalf of the Mexican people, directed by the liberal party. I believe, gentlemen, that the cause of civil wars, not only in Mexico, but throughout all Spanish America, has been the clergy alone, who, when they come to acquire power in the State, always strive to overturn the government and to subordinate the temporal interests of society to their own. This attribute seems to belong principally to the Catholic clergy. “The struggle, then, in which up to this time the patriotic Mexicans have been engaged, was a holy struggle, and the sympathy of the whole people of the United States was with them—a people who, whatever may be their religious creeds, adopts as a fundamental principle the most complete religious liberty, and the absolute independence of the Church from the State.