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Commissioners of the Allied Powers, Vera Cruz
January 10, 1862
Mexicans,
The representatives of England, France, and Spain fulfil a sacred duty in giving you to understand their intentions from the moment that they trod the ground of your Republic. The faith of the treaties, broken by the various Governments which have succeeded each other among you, and the individual security of our citizens, continually menaced, have made necessary and indispensable this expedition.
They deceive you who would make you believe that behind our pretensions, as just as they are legitimate, come enveloped plans of conquest and restorations, and of interfering in your politics and government.
Three nations who accepted in good faith and acknowledged your independence have the right to expect you to believe them animated by no cowardly intentions, but rather by others more noble, elevated, and generous.
The three nations that we come representing, and whose first interest appears to be the satisfaction of grievances inflicted upon them, have a higher interest, and one of more general and beneficial consequences; they come to extend the hand of friendship to a people to whom Providence has been prodigal of all its gifts, and which they behold with grief wasting its forces and extinguishing its vitality through the violent power of civil wars and of perpetual convulsions.
This is the truth, and those charged with the expression of it do it, not with the voice of war and threats, but that you yourselves shall work out your own good fortune, in which we are all concerned. To you, exclusively to you, without intervention of foreigners, belongs the task of constituting yourselves in a permanent and stable manner. Your labour will be the labour of regeneration, which all will respect, for all will have contributed to it — some with their opinions, others with enlightenment, and all and every one with their conscience. The evil is great, the remedy urgent now or never can you make your prosperity.
Mexicans ! Listen to the voice of the Allied Powers, the anchor of salvation in the destroying tempest through which you are rushing. Deliver yourselves up to their good faith and righteous intentions. Fear nothing from restless and turbulent spirits, which, should they show themselves, would be cowed by your firm and decided attitude. Meanwhile we shall preside impassibly over the glorious spectacle of your regeneration, guaranteed through order and liberty.
So will it be understood, we are sure, by the Supreme Government, to which we address ourselves. So will it be understood by the enlightened of the country, to whom we speak, and as good patriots you will all agree to the laying down of your arms, and that reason alone shall be put forward, which is the power that ought to triumph in this the nineteenth century.