Nelson to J. H. Oglesby, December 13, 1872

A.

[From the New Orleans Republican.]

commercial prospects and progress of new orleans.

A letter addressed by Hon. Thomas H. Nelson, United States minister at Mexico, to J. H. Oglesby, esq., president of the Chamber of Commerce of New Orleans.

Dear Sir: Instead of returning to my post of duty by way of New Orleans, as I had intended, I find, on the eve of my departure, that important considerations compel me to go by way of New York. I will therefore submit in writing some hastily prepared suggestions, in response to your communication in respect to the prospects and methods of establishing and maintaining commercial and mercantile relations with our sister republic.

Nothing is more common among persons who possess but a superficial knowledge of Mexico than the opinion that its present condition is infinitely less prosperous than before its emancipation from the yoke of Spain.

This statement, which first acquired currency in the United States about the time of the Mexican war, and which at that time was based upon plausible, if not upon correct reasoning, has obtained such strength by constant repetition as to have become one of the commonplaces of the American press, and one of the firmly rooted convictions of the American people. And yet, to those who know in what consists the real strength and prosperity of a people; to those who can distinguish between the interests of a limited class and those of a nation at large; to those who understand that the tawdry finery of a score of aristocrats, and the deceptive ostentation of a church endowed with the spoils of centuries, does not constitute national prosperity; to those, in short, who have instituted an intelligent comparison between the Mexico of to-day and the Mexico of the preceding generation, and with New Spain under its latest viceroys, it is apparent, not only that Mexico has made notable strides along the pathway of progress, but that she has passed through the furnace of political regeneration, has secured the great conquests of civil and religious liberty, and has opened wide her doors to the regenerating influences which will make her, in brief, a participant of the wonderful blessings which Providence has so lavishly bestowed upon our own favored land.

At the beginning of the present century, and for many years thereafter, Mexico was the most populous country in the New World, and its capital was the largest city in America. Since that time Mexico has nearly doubled in population, while it has lost two-thirds of its territory; but the miraculous rapidity with which the United States has advanced, leaving Mexico far behind, causes us to regard her slower growth as a retrogression.

The long series of revolutions of which Mexico has been the prey has given rise to the natural opinion in foreign countries that the Mexican people are essentially turbulent and impossible to govern. Those who hold this opinion are not aware of the causes which have lain at the bottom of Mexican commotions, and consequently of the reasons which may be adduced to show that the revolutionary epoch in Mexico is substantially closed.

Mexico at the time of achieving her independence had absolutely no education in self-government. The movement of independence, commenced in 1810 by the Priest Hidalgo, was drowned in blood after eight years of irregular warfare, during which the insurgents never succeeded in establishing a regular government. The movement of Iguala, which, in 1820, effected the separation from Spain, under the guidance of Augustine Iturbide, had in view merely her independence from the Spanish yoke, but without a thought of effecting any change in the form of government.

That Mexico is to-day a republic is primarily owing to the refusal of the royal family of Spain to send one of its princes as the monarch of Mexico; and, secondarily, to the reaction brought about by the Spanish party in Mexico, who were unwilling to see a native of the country seated upon the throne which they had destined for a Spanish prince. The republic was founded in 1824, after the fall of the ephemeral empire of Iturbide, not because there was not a republican party in Mexico, but because that was the only possible form of government in the absence of a monarch. The first generation of Mexican presidents and cabinet ministers was composed almost exclusively of persons who were at heart monarchists, and it is easy to divine the confusion which this fact introduced into all branches of the administration. Personal ambition took the place of administrative talent, and as armed force was the only certain means of satisfying such ambition, none but military leaders for nearly forty years ever occupied the presidency of Mexico. The first constitution, a hastily devised imitation of our own, could not flourish in such soil. The American Constitution had for its mission to unite colonies previously separated; the Mexican constitution erected semi-independent states in a country previously ruled by a centralizing system. It was natural that the first generation of the independent existence of Mexico should he filled with the complex strife between despotic and liberal institutions, between centralism and federalism, and that the strife should be the more bloody because largely made in the interest of personal ambition. The most representative man whom Mexico has produced, General Santa Anna, aptly symbolizes in his manifold career the war of ideas from which Mexico has but just emerged. Commencing life as a subaltern in the Spanish army, in waging war upon the early insurgents, we see him in 1821 acquire the rank of general by co-operating in the monarchical revolution of Iturbide; to be the first to pronounce against that unhappy Emperor in 1822. In the series of nearly fifty rulers who have held sway in Mexico since then, Santa Anna has waged open or secret war for or against every administration but his own. In his first presidency he was elected as a federalist, and overthrew the federal constitution. In his second term he again overthrew the existing institutions in favor of another plan of government. In his third presidency he restored the constitution of 1824, and his last administration made himself dictator, with the title of “His Serene Highness.” What Santa Anna did upon a grand scale many other military chieftains did upon the lesser theater of the state governments. The question of the form of government could never be said to be definitely solved for Mexico until the adoption in 1857 of her present constitution, and that event, as is well known, became the signal for the essentially religious contest known as the war of reform, which, in its turn, led to foreign intervention and to the evanescent empire of Maximilian.

The facts upon which the preceding résumé are founded fill the melancholy history of Mexico for half a century, and, it must be confessed, are quite sufficient to justify the popular impression of Mexico as an essentially turbulent country.

Yet, in the light of the above considerations, can it be wondered at that it has cost half a century of blood and suffering to conquer the assurance of a prosperous future under a genuinely republican system of government?

The history of Mexico during the fifteen years that have elapsed since the adoption of the constitution of 1857 is a sufficient guarantee that such a future is really before her. The great questions which have so long agitated the country have been, as I believe, definitely resolved. It is certain that Mexico is to continue without interruption under her present republican and federal régime; it is certain that the power and influence of the clergy, which for three centuries and a half preyed like a vampire upon her life-blood, is irretrievably gone; it is certain that the people have now received that education in self-government which will enable it easily to resolve the administrative problems of the future. Above all, there now remains no great question of the future, which, like the slavery question for a long time with us, was a standing menace for the perpetuity of her institutions. Strong in her costly acquisitions of liberty and independence, strong in the assured friendship of her powerful neighbor, rich in the countless treasures of her soil and climate, fortunate beyond calculation in her geographical position with reference to the commerce of the world, resolute in the adoption and naturalization of the great inventions of the age for abbreviating time and space, Mexico is now just entering upon an era of internal improvements which may be considered to date from the conclusion of the railway between the city of Mexico and the port of Vera Cruz at the end of the present year.

The competition of American and European capital for the lucrative privilege of providing Mexico with means of communication has fairly commenced, and the Americans are likely to gain the preference. Two great railroad enterprises, either of which, if fully carried out, is certain to revolutionize the commerce of Mexico, are now knocking at the doors of the Mexican Congress for permission to confer upon Mexico the greatest of blessings. I refer to the International Railway of Texas, which proposes to construct a line from the city of Mexico to the Rio Grande, and to the scheme of General Rosecrans for a system of railways to connect most of the important cities of the republic with its capital. It is probable that both undertakings will be successful in great part, and that five years hence it will be possible not only to leave New Orleans in a palace-car and arrive within a week in the city of Mexico, but also to visit in the same manner the eight or ten principal cities of the republic. Within the same period of time the Texas Pacific Railroad will undoubtedly be completed, skirting one-half of the northern frontier of Mexico, and intersecting at Paso del Norte with the narrow-gauge Denver and El Paso road, which will probably extend far beyond Chihuahua toward the interior of Mexico. The port of Guaymas will then be connected with the capital of Arizona by means of a railroad running due north and intersecting the Texas Pacific at another point.

When once these links of union shall have been established, the commercial relations between the United States and Mexico will rapidly assume enormous proportions. Each country seems to have been created expressly to become the natural feeder and the natural market of the other. Each abounds, by reason of its differences of soil and climate, in precisely the productions which are most needed in the other. While in the United States the area which can be successfully devoted to the cultivation of articles of such universal consumption as cotton, sugar, rice, and tobacco is necessarily limited, and for the three latter is sufficient to supply hut a small proportion of the home demand, the capacity of Mexico for the production of these four great staples is practically unlimited. In connection with our sources of supply of these articles a consideration arises which I think should have great weight with our Government in awarding the preference to Mexico above Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Brazil, which at the present time enjoy the profitable monopoly of these great staples of commerce. Since the moral sense of our nation, aided by the irresistible logic of events, pronounced its fiat of reprobation upon the institution of human slavery, the United States should be considered as essentially an anti-slavery nation, and, in despite of former prejudices, no section of the country has now any interest in defending the memory of that extinct abuse. It is now time that, having washed our own hands of that reproach by the events of a period to which I need not refer in detail, we now have a right to openly express our opinion of slavery in other countries, where it exists in forms so repugnant as almost to justify, by contrast, the milder system which cost us so much blood and treasure to extirpate. We have now a right, and many would maintain that it is a national duty, to discriminate in our tariff legislation between the product of free and slave labor, and such just discrimination would undoubtedly redound chiefly to the profit of Mexico. But it is not merely under philanthropical aspects that such legislation may be justified and recommended; it is equally desirable from the stand-point of the Monroe doctrine. The countries competing with Mexico in the staples above mentioned are not merely countries whose productive industry is based upon slave labor, but they are also ruled upon the monarchical system, which, at this period of the nineteenth century, ought to be considered an exotic upon American soil. None of the countries in question could justly complain of a discrimination based upon two such powerful and equitable considerations. It would constitute another great step in the onward march of our distinctively American international law, and would probably find imitators, as it would certainly merit applause and respect, among the more advanced nations of the Old World. It would be a signal national testimonial of friendship and encouragement to all the republics of the New World, and would be directly profitable, not only to Mexico, but also to the five republics of Central America, to Colombia, and Venezuela.

Moreover, from the materialistic stand-point of national and private interests, the policy I recommend has peculiar claims upon the people of the southwestern States, more particularly Louisiana and Texas. Their commercial future is so direct and intimately bound up in the growth and development of mercantile relations with Mexico, as to make it unnecessary to dwell further upon this point. Every legislative step which tends to foster such commerce is a step in favor of the Southwestern States.

Not only the four staples which I have mentioned above would share in the impulse given by a wise development of mercantile relations with Mexico; there are other articles of vast consumption, not produced upon our own soil, with which Mexico is capable of supplying the world. I need only mention coffee, chocolate, indigo, mahogany, and dye-woods. In return for these precious commodities Mexico would naturally receive from us the manufactures which she now buys chiefly from England, France, and Germany. Thus, our American manufacturers, availing themselves of our magnificent water-power, would take deep root in the Gulf States, and would elevate them to a degree of prosperity unknown in their palmiest days of old.

To attain this result the adoption of the legislation I have indicated would undoubtedly tend in no ordinary degree.

The completion of the projected line of railways between the two countries will certainly have a vital influence in the same direction, with or without the stimulus of such favoring legislation.

But for the inauguration of a vast and profitable commerce between Mexico and the Southwestern States, it is not necessary to await the tardy apparition of the iron-horse in the central States of Mexico, nor to follow the uncertain course of legislation. The road to the treasures of Mexico lies open to the merchants of New Orleans, and it is an unceasing wonder to me that that road has been completely abandoned. Mexico has done her part. In the years since the fall of the short-lived empire, she has increased the production of her Gulf States; she has reformed vexatious fiscal legislation, by means of a comparatively liberal tariff which went into force the 1st of July last; and, above all, she has completed the most important railway for the interests of her maritime commerce. Before the 1st of January next, trains will have passed from the capital of Mexico to her most important sea-port. Above all, she stands ready to give, if she has not already given, a liberal subsidy to a line of steamers from New Orleans to Vera Cruz. She has already aided the establishment of a line of coasting steamers, owned in New York, and which should begin its trips to all the Mexican ports in the Gulf in November or December of the present year. The importance of this line as a feeder to a New Orleans line cannot be ignored. And I have no doubt that, in the case of the adoption of the friendly American legislation to which I have before adverted, Mexico would be sufficiently grateful to her nearest neighbor and her best friend to make corresponding in fact, if not in name, something very like a reciprocity treaty, which will redound to the benefit of both countries.

In conclusion, I beg leave to inclose a copy of a dispatch addressed by me to the Department of State in November, 1870, which covers most of the inquiries contained in your communication.

I remain, &c.,