This strange omission it does seem to me could not have
occurred but by design. My way of living leads me to be about the courts
of justice; and there I have sometimes seen a good lawyer, struggling for
his client's neck in a desperate case, employing every artifice to work
round, befog, and cover up with many words some point arising in the case
which he dared not admit and yet could not deny. Party bias may help to
make it appear so, but with all the allowance I can make for such bias,
it still does appear to me that just such, and from just such necessity,
is the President's struggle in this case.
Sometime after my colleague [Mr. Richardson] introduced the resolutions I
have mentioned, I introduced a preamble, resolution, and interrogations,
intended to draw the President out, if possible, on this hitherto
untrodden ground. To show their relevancy, I propose to state my
understanding of the true rule for ascertaining the boundary between
Texas and Mexico. It is that wherever Texas was exercising jurisdiction
was hers; and wherever Mexico was exercising jurisdiction was hers; and
that whatever separated the actual exercise of jurisdiction of the one
from that of the other was the true boundary between them.
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