[Transcript of letter from Secretary of State Henry Clay to Henry Middleton, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary U.S. to St. Petersburg, May 10, 1825] Page: 4 of 12
This letter is part of the collection entitled: Moses and Stephen F. Austin Papers and was provided to The Portal to Texas History by the The Dolph Briscoe Center for American History.
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** 4 -
unjustly, accused by both parties, of violating their declared
neutrality * Put it is, now, cf little consequence to retrace
o
O the causes, remote or proximate, of the revolt of the Spanish
colonies. The great and much more important consideration
which will, no doubt, attract the attention of His Imperial
Majesty is the present state of the contest. The principles
whtch produced the war, and those which may be incorporated
in the institutions of the New ltates, may divide the opinions
of men - Principles, unhappily, are too often the subject of
controversy * But notorious facts are incontrovertible. They
speak a language which silences all speculation^ and should
determine the judgement and the conduct of states, whatever
may be the school in which their rulers are brought up or
practised and whatever the social forms which they wopld
desire to see established - And it is to the voice of such
facte, that Europe and America are, now, called upon,
patiently, to listen.
And in contemplating the present state of the war,
what are the circumstances which must, forcibly, strike every
reflecting observer? Throughout both continents, from the
western limits of the U. States, to Cape Horn the Spanish
power is subdued. The recent decisive victory of ayachuco
has annihilated the last remains of the Spanish force. Not
a foot of territory in all that vast extent, owns the dominion,
not a bayonet sustains the cause of Spain. The war, in truth,
has ended. It has been a war between a contracted corner of
(J- Europe and an entire continent; between ten millions of
O
people amidst their own extraordinary conaruisions, fighting,
at a distance, across an ocean of three thousand miles in
extent, against twenty millions contending, at home, for their
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[Transcript of letter from Secretary of State Henry Clay to Henry Middleton, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary U.S. to St. Petersburg, May 10, 1825], letter, May 10, 1825; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth216475/m1/4/: accessed April 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting The Dolph Briscoe Center for American History.