Excerpt from Speech of Mr. Hudson, of Massachusetts, on the Cost of the War and Finances of the Country: Delivered in the House of Representatives of the U. States, February 15, 1848

Mr. Hudson, of Massachusetts, next obtained the floor. He said that the present condition of our country is well calculated to fill the mind with the most serious apprehensions. We are, said he, in the midst of a war - a war which a majority of this House have declared to have been unnecessarily and unconstitutionally commenced by the Executive. War in itself is at all times a great calamity; but when it is commenced without just cause, and is prosecuted for the unholy purpose of conquest, it becomes a crime of the deep est dye. Such, I em persuaded, is the character of the war in which we are now engaged. It has already sent to a premature grave many thousands of our citizens, involved us in a heavy national debt, filled our people with a thirst for conquest, degraded us in the eyes of every civilized nation, and brought us to a point where the consummation of our ambitious designs may -prove the prelude of internal dissensions, more to be dreaded than foreign war itself.

I shall not, at this time, Mr. Chairman, attempt an examination of the causes of this unnatural, and, as I believe, iniquitous war. This has been done, and ably done, by others. After the repeated exhibitions of the facts in the case, the question can hardly be considered an Open one. It has been demonstrated, again and again, that the Texas we annexed was revolutionary Texas, and hence that her boundary was marked by the sword; that she never extended her jurisdiction beyond the immediate valley of the N ueces that her claim to the Rio Grande was invalid, and that the resolutions of annexation regarded it as such, and reserved to the United States the right of settling the boundary with Mexico; that Mexico had a custom-house at Santa Fe and at Brasos San tiago, both upon the left bank of the Rio Grande, where our merchants and traders had long been in the habit of paying duties to the Mexican government; that two days after the passage of the resolutions of annexation, Congress passed an act in relation to drawbacks, which recognised Santa Fe by name as a Mex ican city, and that nine months subsequently the Secretary of the Treasury ih formed the House that this act allowing drawbacks on foreign exports to Santa Fe, in filexico, had gone into effect, and was beginning to produce the most happy results; that we had a consul residing at Santa Fe, when our army was ordered into the country; that Mexico had not only civil but military posses sion on the left bank of the Rio Grande; that the Executive apprized General Taylor of that fact, and directed him not to disturb those permanent establish ments, nor to interfere with the laws, religion, or usages of the people; in a word, that the whole valley of the Rio Grande, whether on the right or left bank of that river, was Mexican - a Mexican population, speaking the Mexican language, with Mexican laws, Mexican customs, Mexican jurisdiction - as purely Mexican as the city of Mexico itself. These facts are fully sustained foy the public records of this Government, known and read of all men.

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