I made some answer, half jest, half earnest, in a mood of mocking

bitterness, which, perhaps, more truly accorded with the temper of

both of us. He did not perceive the bitterness, however.

"You jest, but mine is not altogether jest. Half-serious glimpses

of what I tell you float certainly before my eyes. Such things

may happen yet, and the southwest is the world in which you are yet

to see many wondrous things. The time must come when Texas shall

stretch to Mexico. These miserable slaves and reptiles--mongrel

Spaniards and mongrel Indians--can not very long bedevil that great

country. It must fall into other hands. It must be ours; and who,

when that time comes, will carry into the field more thorough claims

than mine. Master of myself, fearing nothing, caring for nothing;

with a gallant steed that knows my voice, and answers with whinny

and pricked ears to my encouragement; with a rifle that can clip

a Mexican--dollar or man--at a hundred yards, and a heart that can

defy the devil over his own dish, and with but one spoon between

us--and who so likely to win his principality as myself? Look to

see it, Clifford, I shall be a prince in Mexico; and when you hear

of the prince Sans Souci be assured you know the man. Seek me then,

and ask what you will. You have CARTE BLANCHE from this moment."

"I shall certainly keep it in mind, prince."

"Do so: laugh as you please; it is only becoming that you should

laugh in the presence of Sans Souci; but do not laugh in token

of irreverence. You must not be too skeptical. It does not follow

because I am a dare-devil that I am a thoughtless one. I have been

so, perhaps, but from this moment I go to work! I shall be fettered

by fortune no longer. Thank Heaven, that is now done--gone--lost;

I am free from its incumbrance! I feel myself a prince, indeed; a

man, every inch of me. This night I devote as a fitting finish to

my old lifeless existence.

"Hear me!" he continued; "you laugh again, Clifford--very good!

Laugh on, but hear me. You shall hear more of me in time to come.

I fancy I shall be a fellow of considerable importance, not in Texas

simply, or in Mexico, but here--here in your own self-opinionated

United States. Suppose a few things, and go along with me while I

speak them. That Texas must stretch to Mexico I hold to be certain.

A very few years will do that. It needs only thirty thousand more

men from our southern and southwestern States, and the brave old

English tongue shall arouse the best echoes in the city of Montezuma!

That done, and floods of people pour in from all quarters. It

needs nothing but a feeling of security and peace--a conviction

that property will be tolerably safe, under a tolerably stable

government--in other words, an Anglo-Saxon government--to tempt

millions of discontented emigrants from all quarters of the world.

Will this result have no results of its own, think you? Will the

immense resources of Mexico and Texas, represented, as they then

will be, by a stern, pressing, performing people, have no effect

upon these states of yours? They will have the greatest; nay, they

will become essential to balance your own federal weight, and keep

you all in equilibrio. For look you, the first hubbub with Great

Britain gives you Canada, at the expense of some of your coast-towns,

a few millions of treasure, and the loss of fifty thousand men.

A bad exchange for the south; for Canada will make six ponderous

states, the policy and character of which will be New England

all over. To balance this you will have your Florida territory,

[Footnote: Florida, since admittied, but unhappily, as a single

state.] of which two feeble states may be made. Not enough for your

purposes. But the same war with England will render it necessary

that your fleet should take possession of Cuba; which, after a civil

apology to Spain for taking such a liberty with her possessions,

and, perhaps, a few million by way of hush money, you carve into two

more states, and, in this manner, try to bolster up your federal

relations. How many of her West India islands Great Britain will

be able to keep after such a war, is another problem, the solution

of which will depend upon the relative strength of fleets and

success of seamanship. These islands, which should of right be

ours, and without which we can never be sure against any maritime

power so great and so arrogant as England, once conquered by

our arms, find their natural, moral, and social affinities in the

southern states entirely; and, so far, contribute to strengthen

you in your congressional conflicts. But these are not enough, for

the simple reason that the population of states, purely agricultural,

never makes that progress which is made in this respect by a

commercial and manufacturing people. With the command of the gulf,

the possession of an independent fleet by the Texans, the political

characteristics of the states of Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama,

Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas, must undergo certain marked

changes, which can only be neutralized by the adoption, on the part

of these states, of a new policy corresponding with their change

of interests. How far the cultivation of cotton by Texas will lead

to its abandonment in Carolina and Georgia, is a question which the

next ten years must solve. That they will be compelled to abandon

it is inevitable, unless they can succeed in raising the article

at six cents; a probability which no cotton-planter in either of

these states will be willing to contemplate now for an instant.

Meanwhile, Texas is spreading herself right and left. She conquers

the Cumanches, subdues the native mongrel Mexicans. Her Hoestons and

Lamars are succeeded by other and abler men, under whose control

the evils of government, which followed the sway of such small

animals as the Guerreros, and the Bolivars, the Bustamentes,

and Sant' Annas, are very soon eradicated; and the country, the

noblest that God ever gave to man in the hands of men, becomes a

country!--a great and glorious country--stretching from the gulf

to the Pacific, and providing the natural balance, which, in a few

years, the southern state of this Union will inevitably need, by

which alone your great confederacy will be kept together. You see,

therefore, why I speed to Texas. Should I not, with my philosophy,

my horse and my rifle--not to speak of stout heart and hand--reasonably

aspire to the principality of Sans Souci? Laugh, if you please, but

be not irreverent. You shall have carte blanche then if you will

have a becoming faith now, on the word of a prince. I say it, It

is written--Sans Souci." [Footnote: All these speculations were

written in 1840-'41. I need not remark upon those which have since

been verified.] "Altissimo, excellentissimo, serenissimo!"




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