Mr.Wilson's declaration, that, unless this legislation should be repealed, he would not "know how to deal with other matters of even greater delicacy and nearer consequence" had puzzled Congress and the country.

The debates show the keenest curiosity as to what the President had in mind.

The newspapers turned the matter over and over, without obtaining any clew to the mystery.

Some thought that the President had planned to intervene in Mexico, and that the tolls legislation was the consideration demanded by Great Britain for a free hand in this matter.

But this correspondence has already demolished that theory.