Page:Juarez and Cesar Cantú (1885).djvu/36

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36

sufficient to show that his royal relatives did not deem it necessary to substitute a better coffin.

The right which Benito Juarez has acquired to the high esteem of the Mexicans, and the respect in which they should hold his memory, so unjustly calumniated in these remarks of the historian Cesar Cantú, determined the President o£ the Republic to authorize this publication, in which it is demonstrated:

1st. That Juarez did not enter into any treaty with the United-Slates to sell, cede, or mortgage either Sonora or any other State or territory of the Republic.

2nd. That the absurd assertion accepted by Cesar Cantú, to the effect that Juarez and his Government had sold the body of Maximilian, is false in every particular.

Under the influence of political hatred, whatever any one wishes to say may still be said; but every body knows now the historical truth relative to these acts of the immortal Benitó Juarez.[1]

Let us now look at the official documents relating to the delivery of the body of Maximilian, which, as we have said in another place, could have been consulted by the Italian historian, if he had desired to know the truth, and which were published here in 1867.

Will European writers rectify the error into which they fell when speaking of Mexico and of Juarez, thus showing that they acted without malice, and only

  1. The Spanish translator-of Cesar Cantu's work, when he saw the insults heaped upon the Mexican people, their public men, their army, etc. could not abstain from adding the following words in a note, which we copy: This manner of maligning a whole people is inexcusable; the affection of the historian for the deceived Archduke cannot be accepted as an attenuating circumstance."