8
champion of reform; and who, far from submitting to Maximilian, as certain deluded parties anticipated, fought against him without truce or rest, and thus worthily responded to the confidence universally reposed in him by his countrymen.
Withe regard to the judgment of the historian, we think the foregoing is sufficient to show the rock upon which his impartiality stumbled. With respect to the fact as it really is, we have to present it with all its antecedents. These are as follows:
In the session of the Spanish Senate, held on the 24th of December 1862, when discussing the reply to the speech from the Throne, General O'Donnell, then President of the Cabinet, said: "Juarez, as a Mexican, has, in my opinion, a stain which can never he effaced. Juarez has signed a treaty by which he sells to the United-States two provinces under the title of a pledge for two years, as a guarantee for a loan. . . . . This is a stain which I cannot imagine how the Mexicans will view. Were I a Mexican, I never would forgive him" [1]
The Duke of Tetuan was, then, one of the first who launched this unfounded accusation against the patriot Benito Juarez; but it was also to him that the illustrious Mexican first gave a solemn contradiction by publishing the letter which appeared in the Diario
- ↑ A clear proof of the candor of General O'Donell, as well as of the value of the sources from which he obtained his information, is the fact that during the same session of the Senate and in the same speech, he read a communication from the Conservative leader Don Felix Zuloaga, dated in Habana, August 14th 1862, in which this gentleman attributes to Juarez the intention to "exterminate the whole white race in Mexico." How then can it surprise us that the Duke of Tetuan should have given credit to the false report relative to the sale of the two provinces, if he believed that Juarez was the promoter of a war of races?
