published in Nicaragua, and of the effect it was likely to produce on the country. The Secretary of State insisted on the dismissal of Mr. Wheeler to the last; and only the day before he left office, he required of the President, as a personal favor, that he should procure the resignation of the minister. The decree of the 22d of September was intended to destroy the delusion of the public men of the United States as to the desire of Nicaragua for annexation. To a thinking mind it was apparent that to enter the Federal Union would be to defeat the object of the decree; for the federal law prohibits the introduction within the limits of its authority of any persons held to labor for a term of years. Nicaragua could not expect to draw her negro labor from States already complaining of the deficiency of their own supply; and the Southern States would themselves have opposed the annexation of a territory which might drain from them the labor they so much need. In the heat of party passion, however, such views were not appreciated by the politicians, of whom Mr. Marcy was a type. They were too much absorbed in watching the currents of popular opinion and in distributing the spoils of party warfare, to devote any time to the consideration of the public weal or of a true and just public policy. So far were the politicians of the Union from perceiving it was Walker’s policy by the slavery decree to declare his hostility to annexation, that some of them supposed they had achieved a discovery by the publication of certain letters instructing Goicouria as to the course he should pursue in England. The intendente-general was authorized by Walker to proceed to London in order to impress on the English cabinet the fact that Nicaragua had no desire for admission into the American Union; and it was supposed that he, being a Cuban, might more readily get the ear of the British Ministry on the subject than a native of the United States. The letter of Walker to Goicouria instructed him to explain that the necessities of Nicaragua required “a republic based on military principles,” such a republic being clearly unfit for admission into the northern Union. The English would readily perceive that the growth of such a republic toward the southern limits of the United States would tend to restrain the territorial extension of the latter power. Walker conceived that by such a policy he would promote the welfare of his native no less than of his adopted country; for the acquisition by the United States of any territory covered by a Spanish-American population would be fertile of troubles and dangers to the confederacy, as well as of suffering and oppression to the inhabitants of the new territory. Above all, the acquisition of territory on the south would be fatal to the slaveholding States; for it would complete the circle of free-labor communities now girdling them on almost every side.