opinion as to the inevitable results of a national war.  We were deceived, and perhaps you Mexicans were also deceived, in judging of the real intentions of General Santa Anna when you recalled and when your Government permitted him to return.  Under this state of things the Mexican nation has seen the results lamented by all, and by us most sincerely, for we appreciate as is due the valor and noble decision of those unfortunate men who go to battle ill-conducted, worse cared for, and almost always enforced by violence, deceit, or perfidy.  We are witnesses, and we shall not be taxed with partiality as a party interested when we lament with surprise that the heroic behavior of the garrison at Vera Cruz in its valiant defense has been aspersed by the general who has just been routed and put to shameful flight at Buena Vista by a force far inferior to his own.  The same general rewarded the insurgents of the capital, promoters of civil war, and heaped outrage upon those who had just acquired for themselves singular distinction by a resistance beyond expectation and of admirable decision.  Finally, the bloody events of Cerro Gordo have plainly shown the Mexican nation what it may reasonably expect if it is no longer blind to its real situation—­a situation to which it has been brought by some of its generals whom it has most distinguished and in whom it has most confidence.  The hardest heart would have been moved to grief in contemplating any battlefield in Mexico a moment after the last struggle.  Those generals whom the nation has paid without service rendered for so many years, have, in the day of need, with some honorable exceptions, but served to injure her by their bad example or unskillfulness.  The dead and wounded on those battlefields received no marks of military distinction, sharing alike the sad fate which has been the same from Palo Alto to Cerro Gordo; the dead remained unburied and the wounded abandoned to the clemency and charity of the victor.  Soldiers who go to battle knowing they have such reward to look for deserve to be classed with the most heroic, for they are stimulated by no hope of glory, nor remembrance, nor a sigh, nor even a grave!  Again, contemplate, honorable Mexicans, the lot of peaceful and industrious citizens in all classes of your country.  The possessions of the Church menaced and presented as an allurement to revolution and anarchy; the fortunes of rich proprietors pointed out for plunder of armed ruffians; and merchants and the mechanic, the husbandman and the manufacturer, burdened with contributions, excises, monopolies, duties on consumption, surrounded by officers and collectors of these odious internal customs; the man of letters and the legislator, the freeman of knowledge who dares to speak, persecuted without trial by some faction or by the very rulers who abuse their power; and criminals unpunished are set at liberty, as were those of Perote.  What, then, Mexicans, is the liberty of which you boast?