Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. 1841. British Recognition Postponed. Kennedy's Mission To Texas. The year 1840 had seen the failure of Treat's mission to Mexico and the preparation by the signing of treaties between Hamilton and Palmerston for a British recognition of Texas. It could hardly be expected, therefore, that in the year 1841 Mexico would look with friendly eyes upon a renewal of overtures from Texas. Sufficient time had not yet elapsed to make it probable that a new negotiation could succeed where two had so recently failed. Both in Mexico and in England, also, conditions in domestic politics were absorbing public attention to the exclusion of Texan matters. Meantime Pakenham's conviction of the weakness of the Mexican state and of the probable rapid development of the revolted province was unshaken. Further evidence of his unchanged mind regarding Mexico is found in a long despatch to Palmerston, in which he outlined a plan for British acquisition of California.1 Of this, of course, the Mexican government was wholly in ignorance. It was, however, cognizant of too many of Pakenham's acts and offers to be free from suspicion of English policy, and with the official announcement from London that Texas was about to receive British recognition an indirect newspaper attack was made upon England and her agents. The news reached Mexico in January, and in that 1 See Chapter XI. month and in February the newspapers were filled with indefinite charges and vague threats, all, apparently, directed against the English government, and betraying the sense of outraged national pride and that romantic patriotic bluster which was the country's striking characteristic as it was its greatest misfortune. This false patriotism, to which Paken- ham had already called attention, violently demande...