with the last hope of turning you from your purpose, but also that I may put on record the earnest and solemn protest of at least one of our countrymen to the course you are, I fear, about to pursue. I desire to talk to you very plainly, as one citizen of a Republic to another, as one out of office and without power, but devoted to the institutions of his country, to another in office and in power, who is about to lend his aid to the extinguishment of the last feeble flame of republicanism in a neighboring country. Whether, if you will take my counsel, fame will reward you or not, I cannot tell; but I do now and believe enough in the brave liberty-loving American heart to say, if you reject it, your name will be rendered infamous for all time. You will be regarded as the modern political Judas who has betrayed liberty with a kiss. With the ruin of your party, all sorts of unjust but natural suspicions will attach to your name. You are known to have had frequent and cordial interviews with the consul of France, and you will be seen by the thoughtless multitude through a flood of French gold, which will be believed to have overwhelmed your integrity. And, what is worse, you will have the bitter consciousness of having deserved all this; for what are you about to do? You leave your position as the collector of the port of San Francisco and at the bidding of the French consul you go into an inquisition as unwarrantable and illegal as it is complaisant and contemptible. Can you intend to construe literally the Bible injunction of turning one cheek when the other is smitten? Is it because France refits and reprovisions the Confederate Alabama that you thus repay her? Is it because a French vessel carries the challenge of Captain Semmes from a French port to the Kearsarge that you give up Mexico for France? For which of the very friendly acts of that country toward our own are you ready, willing, and anxious to sacrifice the last hope of a sister Republic struggling for life and beseeching our aid? View the matter from any point you can and justify it to an intelligent and indignant people hereafter, if you may. You say you have the Government orderse not to allow arms to go to Mexico; admit it, but you must know the Government in its present straits is frequently obliged to say one thing and mean and wish another. But suppose you have these orders, if you cannot evade them disobey them, and if the Government does not approve your action, go out of office with the consciousness of having done at least one good thing, rather than with the curses of millions of you rown countrymen and the verlasting infamy which will otto your name. I tell you that if these arms reach Mexico she will regain her liberties, but if through the pusillanimous complacency of our Government, by you its agent, she should fall to the tender despotism of Austria, your name will become the synonym of everything that is humanly base, wherever the democracy rears the flag of a free people.

To do what you are doing or contemplate it, is to go beyond your duty and to usurp a power your office does not confer. You are taking a responsibility, not in aid but in oppression of an ally; you are doing a cruel, wicked, treasonable thing. Mexico, is about to fight our battles for us; she is about to save us millions of treasure, and precious lives; she is about to save us a war with Europe, if you with the known consent of your Government willnly let her. Will you dare to refuse he arms for these purpose? More than this, if Mexico is subjugated France will take Sonora as an indemnity for her most unjustifiable war. She will take Matamoras on the one side and Guaymas on the other; and, with a railroad of only 650 miles, connect the two and control the mouth of the Colorado and that vast Eastern commerce which has