TREATY OF ARBITRATION ACTION OF THE SLAVEHOLDERS.
Mexico, anxious to preserve peace with the United States, not only proposed to refer the claims of the latter to arbi- tration, but once mcire sent a Minister to Washington.
This gentleman arrived in October, and, as is said, from a misapprehension that the Mexican proposition had already- been communicated to the American Government, did not officially announce it till the 22d December, 1837.
The proposition itself was a sore disappointment to the partisans of annexation. It tended to avert, or at least to postpone war. It was a proposition so fair and honorable, so pacific, and so directly appeahng to the moral sense of the community, that it could not be rejected, without bringing great odium upon^the administration;
and the party of which it was the representative, had but httle popularity to spare. Still it was received in sullen silence, and no other notice taken of it at the time, than a formal acknowledgment of its receipt.''^ No less than three times after this acknowledgment, did Mr. Forsyth (Secretary of State), press upon the Mexican Minister new claims, and new demands without deigning even a passing allusion to the very important proposal he had received. Four months elapsed, and this Government had yet given no intimation of its willingness to adopt an equitable and pacific mode of obtaining redress for "the accimiulated wrongs" under which it professed to be suf- * Sec Ex. Doc. 25th Cong., 2 Sess., Vol. 12.
fering. In the meantime, the Mexican offer had become pubhc, and petitions had been presented to Congress praying its acceptance ;* and at