Richmond Palladium

A Difficult Snarl.

A Washington correspondent of the Herald thus 'owns up' to the perplexity in which the Federal Administration is involved by its concurrence in the impudent falsehood that the Rio Grande was throughout its course the rightful Western boundary of Texas:

"With regard to New-Mexico, a distinct territorial dispute remains to be settled. It is this: Does the territory of Mexico east of the Rio Grande, and including Santa Fe, and 200,000 square miles of territory (more or less,) belong to Texas or not? Texas claims it - it was admitted to belong to Texas in the resolutions of Annexation; but Texas never conquered it - never occupied an inch of it - and neither the authorities of the U. States nor of Texas exercised, nor pretended to exercise, any actual jurisdiction over it, till conquered and occupied by the United States forces under Gen. Kearney. He displaced the Mexican Governor, and the Mexican flag from the Mexican Government House at Santa Fe; he superseded by a new code of laws the Mexican federal and municipal statutes. He did not find a Texan in New-Mexico; nor did he appear to be aware that Texas could have the shadow of a claim to the territory till he received the protest of her Governor against the Provisional Government which the General had established in the name of the United States, as the fundamental law of New-Mexico. Then it was that he was informed that he had made a mistake - that Armijo was not a Mexican Governor - that the yellow people of Santa Fe were Texans, and that New-Mexico was a part of Texas.

"The fact is, every other claim of Texas to New Mexico is utterly preposterous. A claim set up to California would be just as good, apart from the resolutions of Annexation. The terms of the Annexation are the only ground which Texas can present as a claim upon New Mexico; and this she can only present as a ground for a demand that the territory shall be ceded to her, not that she possesses it. No sort of sophistry - nothing in the way of ingenuity - can make the boundary of New Mexico the Rio Grande, as transferred from Mexico to the United States. Nothing but a special act can make the river the eastern line of New Mexico.

In justice to Texas that act ought to be passed, notwithstanding the deception in the business of Annexation. The U. S. cannot plead the plea of ignorance in violation of a contract which requires the renewal of the existing title, and a deed in fee simple of the territory. Texas may admit the trick, and plead the letter and the spirit of the parchment. She may plead that if she had not conquered the territory, she would in due season have dispatched another Santa Fe expedition, which would have given her a valid, tangible claim, and which would thus have superseded the necessity of the expedition of Gen. Kearney. But it happened otherwise. The territory was conquered by the United States and not by Texas. It is to be paid for by the United States, as a part of the territories ceded under the late treaty, independently of the cession of Texas. New Mexico is therefore a territory of the United States; and the question is not does it belong to Texas? but shall it be given to Texas in virtue of the compact of Annexation?

"It will have to be done - the boundary indicated by the resolutions of annexation requires it; and under these resolutions, indeed, the territory to the Rio Grande became a part of Texas, with the ratification of the late treaty with Mexico.

"Admitting, then, that the territory to the Rio Grande belongs to Texas, it would only be necessary to extend the line one mile west from the western bend of the river, to include all the territory that is inhabitable. Westward from the narrow border of the Rio Grande to the lofty mountains which overlook the Pacific, a distance of 700 miles, there will be no necessity for any Government save the flag of the United States. Within this longitudinal line, including the small remnant west of the Bravo, of New-Mexico and all that vast region to the Sierra Nevada, embracing 400,000 square miles of California, there will be no necessity for laws to protect free labor or slave labor. Why? Because it is a desert, a wild, blank, howling wilderness of confused mountains, of bald rocks and plains of scorching sand; a chaos of volcanic ruins - a volcanic waste, not yet cooled down, a region, as described by Col. Fremont, 'of fracture, of violence and of fire.'

-Let the People not forget that this outrageously absurd claim of the Rio Grande as the Western limit of Texas was the immediate cause of the War, while our Government's obstinate persistence therein was the sole obstacle to Peace ten months ago. But for that, we should have had Peace with all we can desire of California last Autumn, before the final carnage at the gates of Mexico, and with a saving of the Fifteen Millions we are now to pay Mexico, as well as of the Twenty or Thirty Millions the War has cost since then. And now all that is worth having of New-Mexico is to be handed over to Texas and Slavery! - N. Y. Tribune.