“So then, the national honor, security of the future, and everything but territorial indemnity, may be considered _no purposes_ and _indefinite_ objects of the war! But having it now settled that territorial indemnity is the only object, we are urged to seize, by legislation here, all that he was content to take a few months ago, and the whole province of Lower California to boot, and to still carry on the war--to take _all_ we are fighting for, and _still_ fight on. Again the President is resolved, under all circumstances, to have full territorial indemnity for the expenses of the war; but he forgets to tell us how we are to get the _excess_ after those expenses shall have surpassed the value [Illustration: THE YOUNG RAIL SPLITTER. Page 57.] of the _whole_ of the Mexican territory. So, again, he insists that the separate national existence of Mexico shall be maintained; but he does not tell us _how_ this can be done after we shall have taken _all_ her territory. Lest the questions I here suggest be considered speculative merely, let me be indulged a moment in trying to show they are not. “The war has gone on some twenty months, for the expenses of which, together with an inconsiderable old score, the President now claims about one-half of the Mexican territory, and that by far the better half, so far as concerns our ability to make anything out of it. It is comparatively uninhabited, so that we could establish land offices in it, and raise money in that way. But the other half is already inhabited, as I understand it, tolerably densely for the nature of the country; and all its lands, or all that are valuable, already appropriated as private property. How, then, are we to make anything out of these lands with this incumbrance on them, or how remove the incumbrance? I suppose no one will say we should kill the people, or drive them out, or make slaves of them, or even confiscate their property? How, then, can we make much out of this part of the territory? If the prosecution of the war has, in expenses, already equalled the _better_ half of the country, how long its future prosecution will be in equalling the less valuable half is not a _speculative_ but a _practical_ question, pressing closely upon us, and yet it is a question which the President seems never to have thought of.