That part of the message relating to the question of annexation was referred, in the House of Representatives, to the committee on Foreign Affairs, and, on December 12th, Mr. Ingersoll, of Pennsylvania, reported from that committee the draft of a joint resolution for the annexation of Texas. It was simply the articles of the agreement of April 12th preceding put into that form. The principal points of it were, the cession of the territory of Texas to the United States, the transfer of the public lands of Texas to the Government of the United States, the pledge of the United States to assume the debt of Texas up to ten millions of dollars, the guarantee of liberty and property to the citizens of Texas, now to be citizens of the United States, and the accordance of Commonwealth local government to Texas as soon as consistent with the Constitution of the United States. As we have seen, the President and Mr. Calhoun had thought that the proper way to annex a foreign state to the United States was by means of a treaty, in which the foreign state should cede its territory to the United States; and that the matter of local government for the ceded territory and its population would then be a question of legislation. We have also seen that the {322} opponents of the proposed Treaty in the Senate took the ground, among other things, that Texas was already a state, seeking admission into the Union as a "State" (Commonwealth), and that this could be effected only by an act of Congress. But now the opposition in the House of Representatives to the joint resolution, expressed in the very words of the proposed Treaty, declared that the resolution provided for a cession of territory by a foreign state to the United States, which cession could be made and accepted only through the form of a treaty. The House had never, however, committed itself to the view of the Senate, and the friends of the resolution wasted no time in demonstrating the inconsistency, but sought to so amend the resolution as to make it an act for the formation of a new Commonwealth, or, as it is usually phrased, an act for the admission of a new "State" into this Union. [Sidenote: Passage of an enabling act for Texas by the House of Representatives.] On January 25th, 1845, the House passed a substitute for the committee's resolution, which substitute was a resolution for enabling the people of Texas to form a Commonwealth constitution and government, preparatory to admission into this Union, and prescribing certain conditions for the assent of Congress to the same. [Sidenote: The resolution in the Senate, and Mr. Archer's inconsistencies.]