Mr. Seward to Mr. Pike.
Sir: Your despatch of August 19 (No. 97) has been carefully considered.
What you have noticed in Europe, in regard to the political aspects of the insurrection here, has been equally observable here during the period which you have mentioned. No fortunate military incident has occurred to revive the hopes of the insurgents, while Union sieges and marches have gone on favorably. The insurgents have burned much and lost more of the cotton that they had pledged to European creditors, while the price of gold in their currency has risen, within two months, from 1,000 per cent. to 1,600 per cent., which is the last reported rate. The insurgent financiers last winter adopted wheat instead of gold for the standard of values, and fixed that of wheat, if I remember rightly, at five dollars per bushel. It is now reported that the farmer refuses to thresh his wheat, and the government agents are considering whether the power to appropriate at five dollars does not also include the necessary preliminary power to thresh the grain.
You have rightly assumed that the safe occupation of New Orleans, so long as it is maintained, is sufficient guaranty for the success of the government. We are, however, not without some concern on that subject; for in the first place we have no clearly reliable assurances that the British government will prevent the departure of the iron rams, which are being prepared in British ship yards, for that or some similar purpose. And next, notwithstanding the great energy of the Navy Department, it has not yet brought out the vessels upon which we can confidently rely for adequate defence against such an enterprise. Nevertheless, Mr. Adams is making the best possible efforts with reference to the first point, and our naval means, which certainly are neither small nor inefficient, are rapidly increasing. Your observations on this subject are so sagacious that I have thought it proper to commend them to the special attention of the Navy Department.
I thank you for the account you have given me of public opinion in Europe in regard to the condition of Mexico and its bearing on the interests of the United States. Public opinion is not embarrassed by a want of accurate knowledge of existing facts. It anticipates and assumes probable events, and thus the imagination early arrives at, and is satisfied with, premature solutions; from Mexico we have nothing in regard to the attitude or proceedings of the republican government, since it withdrew before the invaders to San Luis; from France nothing in regard to the question of a new government, but reiterated assurances of an absence of any design to permanently occupy or dominate in Mexico; and from Austria, only the speculations of the press upon a condition of affairs in Mexico, too imperfectly developed to justify any decisive action by the alleged candidate for an imperial crown.
In these circumstances we see no occasion for extreme sensibility or for immediate demonstration. Mr. Corwin cannot, of course, communicate with the authorities newly instituted in the city of Mexico, while he is shut out from access to the republican one to which he is accredited. That government may, for aught we know, maintain an effectual resistance to the new one, or, on the other hand, it may even succumb. Such a resistance would relieve the people of all difficulties, while, on the other hand, it would be as unreasonable as it would be unavailing to seek to rescue a people that should voluntarily surrender itself to foreign control. The new government, if it succeeds, may respect the sovereignty and all the rights of the United States, and so give us no cause of complaint or dissatisfaction. Our [Page 903] opinions as to the ultimate and permanent success of an European intervention in Mexico were early expressed by way of anticipation. Until we recall them no presumption that they are abandoned can arise. But we see now, instead of a whole and normal Mexico on our southern border, a Mexico divided between Mexicans and the French. We do not know how this new condition of things might sooner or later affect the authority of the United States in Texas. Independently of that consideration, the time has arrived when that authority ought to be, and, as we think, can be, restored in that important border State, and this will be done.
I am, sir, your obedient servant,
James S. Pike, Esq, &c., &c., &c.