Mr. HOWARD. I assure the Senate I shall occupy but a moment longer. She has seized the ports of Mexico; she has confiscated her revenues; she has drenched her soil with blood; she has made it necessary for the republican government of Mexico to enter into obligations of indebtedness which must hereafter weigh heavily and oppressively to her people; and notwithstanding the gigan tic efforts made by the Emperor of the French to convert Mexico into a French province, he has failed; and if today, or if at any time, France withdraws her troops from Mexico and abandons this war which she has thus cruelly and unjustly waged, I hold it to be one of the principles of the law of nations and the law of war that the subject of the war, to wit, the in debtedness On account of which it was waged, has become extinguished, and that France can never hereafter resume the war on account of the same subject matter. She of her own motion took out an execution against poor Mexico to levy a debt. She resorted to the last remedy of kings in the prosecution of the debt. She has failed. Sir, the debt is dead and extinguished. The subject of the war passesinto that oblivion and amnesty which is always implied by a peace, whether the peace be established by treaty or by the mutual cessation of hostilities. And Y: here in my place that such a treaty on the part of {. the States as I have alluded to, a treaty by which we should seize upon a large portion of that republic and out of the avails of which we should satisfy the French Government in respect to the indemnities she has claimed, would be an outrage upon the feelings of the American people and a gross departure from the plain principles of the law of nations. I invite my friend's attention to this branch of this subject. It is one of great importance. Can the U.S., by paying France this debt which she hasoand thus recognizing the justice of the war she has made upon Mexico, stand up in the presence of the other nations of the world and claim not to have been dishonored?