Various - Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847

The last of the five posts, San Diego, is, next to San Francisco, the best harbour in the province. Thus, Upper California contains, at its opposite extremities, two of the best harbours on the Pacific Ocean; each of them being enhanced in value by the distance of any others worthy of the name, San Francisco being nearly one thousand miles from Port Discovery in the north, and San Diego six hundred miles from the Bay of Magdalena in the south.

That in the hands of any vigorous possessors this country would form a most powerful kingdom, is beyond all question; and Sir George Simpson evidently thinks that it might easily be acquired, and with a legitimate claim too, by England. But the still higher question is the policy of a perpetual increase of territory. England already has in America a larger extent of territory than she can people for five hundred years to come. But the possession of California, and perhaps of the whole extent of the Mexican provinces, is on the eve of decision; the American invasion has found no resistance that can deserve the name. The Mexicans fly in every quarter, and a few discharges of cannon put them to flight by thousands. At this moment the whole Mexican Republic, equal in size to half a dozen European States, appears to be crumbling into fragments. The rambling expeditions of the Americans are ravaging it in all directions with impunity, and armies which might have been long since annihilated by a mere guerilla war, have been suffered to march from city to city, with scarcely more resistance than a cattle-stealing skirmish. By the last intelligence, San Juan d' Ulloa has fallen, and Vera Cruz has capitulated after a siege of only three days and a half. The castle is the strongest fortification in the Western World—and, as Napoleon said of Malta, "It is lucky that it had somebody inside to open the gates for us:" the garrison of this fortress seems to have been placed there merely for the purpose of surrendering it. But, whatever may be the fate of men who had such a fortress to defend, and yet whose defence actually cost the assailants but seventeen killed! there can be but one feeling of commiseration for the unhappy inhabitants of Vera Cruz, on whom was rained, day and night, a shower of shot and shell amounting to more than seven thousand of those tremendous missiles. It is computed that the slaughter, and that slaughter chiefly of women and children, amounts to thousands. These are terrible things, even where they may be supposed the necessities of war. But here we can discover no necessity—Vera Cruz was no fortification, it was nearly an open town. We recollect no similar instance of a bombardment. In Europe, it has long been a rule of military morals, that no open city shall ever be bombarded. We believe it to be the boast of the first living soldier in the world—and we could have no more honourable one—that he never suffered a city to be bombarded; from the obvious fact, that the chief victims were the helpless inhabitants, while the soldiery are sheltered by the casemates and bomb-proofs.

At all events, we must regard the contest as decided. The Government has exhibited nothing more than a sullen resolution; and the people little more than the apathy of their own cattle; the troops have exhibited no evidence of discipline, and the only resource of the Finance has been in the wild projects of an empty Exchequer. Whether the United States will be the more prosperous for this conquest, is a question of time alone. Whether the facility of the conquest may not make the multitude frantic for general aggression,—whether the military men of the States may not obtain a popularity and assume a power which has been hitherto confined to civil life,—whether the attractions of military career may not turn the rising generation from the pursuits of trade and tillage, to the idle, or the ferocious life of the American campaigner,—and whether the pressure of public debt, the necessity for maintaining their half-savage conquests by an army, and the passion for territorial aggrandisement, may not urge them to a colonial war with England,—are only parts of the great problem which the next five-and-twenty years will compel the American Republic to solve.

At the same time, we cannot avoid looking upon the invasion of Mexico as a portion of that extraordinary and mysterious agency which is now shaking all the great stagnant districts of the world; which has already awaked Turkey in Europe and in Asia Minor; which has brought Egypt into civilised action; which has broken down the barbarism of the Algerines, and planted the French standard in place of the furies and profligacies of African Mahometanism. Deeply deprecating the guilt of those aggressions, and condemning the crimes by which they have been sustained, we cannot but regard changes so unexpected, so powerful, and so simultaneous, as the operation of a higher power than man's, with objects altogether superior to the shortsightedness of man, and amply bearing the character of working good out of evil, which belongs to the history of Divine Providence in all the ages of the world.

There is one peculiarity in these volumes which we cannot sufficiently applaud, and that is, the thoroughly English spirit in which they are written. Without weak partiality, for the reasons are every where assigned; without narrow prejudice, for the facts are in all instances stated; and without derogating from the merits of other nations, the work is calculated to give a just conception of the value of England to the world.

On his return from the Sandwich Isles—an interesting portion of his travels, to which we have not now time to advert in detail—and preparing to start from the Russian post of New Archangel by a five months' journey through the Russian empire, he gives a glance at what he has done.

"I have," says he, "threaded my way round nearly half the globe, traversing about 220 degrees of longitude, and upwards of 100 of latitude, barely one fourth of this by the ocean. Notwithstanding all this, I have uniformly felt more at home, with the exception of my first sojourn at Sitka, than I should have felt in Calais. I have every where seen our race, under a great variety of circumstances, either actually or virtually invested with the attributes of sovereignty."

After a few words on the vigour of the English blood, as exhibited in the commerce, intelligence, and activity of the United States, he returns to the immediate possessions and prowess of England. "I have seen the English posts which stud the wilderness from the Canadian lakes to the Pacific Ocean. I have seen English adventurers with that innate power which makes every individual, whether Briton or American, a real representative of his country, monopolising the trade, and influencing the destinies of California. And lastly, I have seen the English merchants of a barbarian Archipelago, which promises, under their guidance, to become the centre of the traffic of the east and the west, of the new world and the old. In saying all this, I have seen less than half the grandeur of the English race. How insignificant in comparison are all the other nations of the earth, one nation alone excepted. Russia and Great Britain literally gird the globe where either continent has the greatest breadth, a fact which, taken in connexion with their early annals, can scarcely fail to be regarded as the work of a special Providence. After the fall of the Roman empire, a scanty and obscure people suddenly burst on the west and east, as the dominant race of the times; one swarm of the Normans making its way to England, while another was establishing its supremacy over the Sclavonians of the Borysthenes, the two being to meet in opposite directions at the end of a thousand years."

He regards the gigantic power of Russia as in an unconscious co-partnership with England in the grand cause of commerce and civilisation. He also makes the curious and true remark that, notwithstanding the astonishing successes of the Normans in Europe, they were never numerous enough to establish their language in any of the conquered countries. Their unparalleled successes, therefore, seem to express the idea that those feeble bands of warriors were strengthened every where to accomplish the purposes of Providence.