Page:Vol 5 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/795

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THE TREATY REJECTED.
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against the treaty, and sent the protest to European governments as well as to the department for foreign affairs at Washington. Even in Vera Cruz the treaty caused some displeasure, several officers of the national guard resigning, and the artisans and soldiers manifesttheir displeasure. Doblado preferred a compromise ing with the reaction to foreign intervention; and the minister, Juan Antonio de la Fuente, refused to approve it. The reactionists made a great outcry over it, alleging that national territory had been sold; that independence and religious unity had ceased to exist; commerce and industry were forever ruined; national honor and dignity trampled upon; and protestantism given the freedom of the country. The liberals, in general, on the other hand, saw in the treaty nothing but an amplification and extension of the treaties of 1831 and 1853. Be this as it may, though confirmation was warmly urged by Buchanan and others with powerful arguments, the senate did not deem it wise to burden the country with such obligations, and rejected the treaty.

Almonte, Miramon's minister in Paris, made a treaty in eight articles, on the 26th of November, 1859, with the Spanish ambassador Mon, binding Mexico to prosecute and punish the authors of outrages against Spanish subjects in the haciendas San Vicente and Chiconcuac; and though it was acknowledged that Mexicans were not amenable for those acts, Mexico agreed to indemnify those subjects; Spain, on her part, consenting that such indemnities should not be held as precedents for other cases of the same nature that might occur. The 6th article gave full force and vigor to the treaty of November 12, 1853,[1] without even an incidental mention of the

    of the U. S. The U. S. papers manifested great surprise at the magnitude of the concessions made by Mexico for so small a sum as four million dollars, when twelve years before the U. S. had offered fifteen millions for the transit across Tehuantepec, and later paid ten millions for the Gadsden purchase.

  1. A convention for the adjustment of Spanish claims made by Santa Anna's administration. Méx., Derecho Intern., 1st pt, 409-14; Córtes, Diario Senado, i. no. 8, 65, no. 9, 76, ii. no. 95, 1124.