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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Texas, by William H. Wharton
+
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+Title: Texas
+       A Brief Account of the Origin, Progress and Present State of
+the Colonial Settlements of Texas; Together with an Exposition of the
+Causes which have induced the Existing War with Mexico
+
+Author: William H. Wharton
+
+Release Date: January, 2005 [EBook #7355]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on April 20, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TEXAS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by William Flis, Stan Goodman, Charles Franks
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                                   TEXAS.
+
+
+                              A BRIEF ACCOUNT
+
+                                   OF THE
+
+                     ORIGIN, PROGRESS AND PRESENT STATE
+
+                                   OF THE
+
+                       COLONIAL SETTLEMENTS OF TEXAS;
+
+              TOGETHER WITH AN EXPOSITION OF THE CAUSES WHICH
+                         HAVE INDUCED THE EXISTING
+
+                              WAR WITH MEXICO.
+
+
+    Extracted from a work entitled "A Geographical, Statistical and
+     Historical account of Texas," now nearly ready for the press.
+
+      Some of these numbers have appeared in the New Orleans Bee
+                               and Bulletin.
+
+                                   1836.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+It will be seen that the title of this little pamphlet implies more than
+it contains. As war is now the order of the day, only a small portion of
+the political part of the work on "Texas" is here presented. It is hoped
+and believed that enough is unfolded to convince the most incredulous that
+the colonists of Texas have been _forced_ into this contest with the
+mother country, by persecutions and oppressions, as unremitting as they
+have been unconstitutional. That it is not a war waged by them for cupidity
+or conquest, but for the establishment of the blessings of liberty and good
+government, without which life itself is a curse and man degraded to the
+level of the brute. If the time-hallowed principle of the Declaration of
+Independence, namely, "that governments are instituted for the protection
+and happiness of mankind, and that whenever they become destructive of
+these ends it is the right, nay it is the duty of the people to alter or
+abolish them." If this sacred principle is recognised and acted upon, all
+must admit that the colonists of Texas have a clear right to burst their
+_fetters_, and have also a just claim for recognition as an independent
+nation, upon every government not wholly inimical to the march of light and
+liberty, and to the establishment of the unalienable rights of man.
+
+CURTIUS.
+
+
+
+
+TO AN IMPARTIAL WORLD.
+
+No. I.
+
+
+The unconstitutional oppression long and unremittingly practised upon the
+colonists of Texas, having at length become insupportable, and having
+impelled them to take up arms in defence of their rights and liberties, it
+is due to the world that their motives, conduct and causes of complaint
+should be fully made known. In order to do this it will be necessary to
+explain the origin, progress and present state of the colonial settlements.
+Without parade or useless preliminaries, I shall proceed to the subject,
+as substance and not sound--matter and not manner are the objects of the
+present discussion. It is known at least to the reading and inquiring
+world, that on the dissolution of the connection between Mexico and Spain
+in 1522, Don Augustin Iturbide, by corruption and violence, established
+a short-lived, imperial government over Mexico, with himself at the head
+under the title of Augustin I. On arriving at supreme power, Iturbide or
+Augustin I. found that vast portion of the Mexican government, east of the
+Rio Grande, known by the name of Texas, to be occupied by various tribes of
+Indians, who committed incessant depredations on the Mexican citizens West
+of the Rio Grande, and prevented the population of Texas. He ascertained
+that the savages could not be subdued by the arms of Mexico, nor could
+their friendship be purchased. He ascertained that the Mexicans, owing to
+their natural dread of Indians, could not be induced to venture into the
+wilderness of Texas. In addition to the dread of Indians, Texas held out no
+inducements for Mexican emigrants. They were accustomed to a lazy pastoral
+or mining life, in a healthy country. Texas was emphatically a land of
+agriculture--the land of cotton and of sugar cane, with the culture of
+which staples they were wholly unacquainted; and moreover, it abounded in
+the usual concomitants of such southern regions--fevers, mosquitoes &c.,
+which the Mexicans hated with a more than natural or reasonable hatred.
+Iturbide finding from those causes that Texas could not be populated with
+his own subjects, and that so long as it remained in the occupancy of
+the Indians, the inhabited parts of his dominions continually suffered
+from their ravages and murders, undertook to expel the savages by the
+introduction of foreigners. Accordingly the national institute or council,
+on the 3d day of January, 1823, by his recommendation and sanction, adopted
+a law of colonization, in which they invited the immigration of foreigners
+to Texas on the following terms:--
+
+1st. They promise to protect their liberty, property and civil rights.
+
+2d. They offer to each colonist one league of land, (4,444 acres) for
+coming to Texas.
+
+3d. They guarantee to each colonist the privilege of leaving the empire
+at any time, with all his property, and also the privilege of selling the
+land which he may have acquired from the Mexican government, (see the
+colonization law of 1823, more especially articles 1st, 8th and 20th.)
+These were the inducements and invitations held out to foreigners under the
+imperial government of Iturbide or Augustin I. In a short time, however,
+the nation deposed Iturbide, and deposited the supreme executive power in
+a body of three individuals. This supreme executive power on the 10th of
+August, 1824, adopted a national colonization law, in which they recognized
+and confirmed the imperial colonization law with all its guarantees of
+person and property. It also conceded to the different States the privilege
+of colonizing the vacant lands within their respective limits. (See
+national colonization law, articles 1st and 4th.) In accordance with this
+law, the States of Coahuila and Texas on the 24th March, 1825, adopted
+a colonization law for the purpose, as expressed in the preamble, of
+protecting the frontiers, expelling the savages, augmenting the population
+of its vacant territory, multiplying the raising of stock, promoting the
+cultivation of its fertile lands, and of the arts and of commerce. In this
+state-colonization law--the promises to protect the persons and property
+of the colonists, which had been made in the two preceding national
+colonization laws, were renewed and confirmed. We have now before us the
+invitations and guarantees under which the colonists immigrated to Texas.
+Let us examine into the manner in which these conditions have been complied
+with, and these flattering promises fulfilled. The donation of 4,444 acres
+sounds largely at a distance. Considering, however, all the circumstances,
+the difficulties of taking possession, &c. it will not be deemed an
+entire gratuity or magnificent bounty. If these lands had been previously
+pioneered by the enterprise of the Mexican government, and freed from the
+insecurities which beset a wilderness, trod only by savages--if they had
+have been situated in the heart of an inhabited region, and accessible
+to the comforts and necessaries of life--if the government had have been
+deriving any actual revenue, and if it could have realised a capital
+from the sale of them--then we admit that the donation would have been
+unexampled in the history of individual or national liberality. But how
+lamentably different from all thus was the real state of the case.
+
+The lands granted were in the occupancy of savages and situated in a
+wilderness, of which the government had never taken possession, and of
+which it could not with its own citizens ever have taken possession. They
+were not sufficiently explored to obtain that knowledge of their character
+and situation necessary to a sale of them. They were shut out from all
+commercial intercourse with the rest of the world, and inaccessible to
+the commonest comforts of life; nor were they brought into possession and
+cultivation by the colonists without much toil and privation, and patience
+and enterprise, and suffering and blood, and loss of lives from Indian
+hostilities, and other causes. Under the smiles of a benignant heaven,
+however, the untiring perseverance of the colonists triumphed over all
+natural obstacles, expelled the savages by whom the country was infested,
+reduced the forest into cultivation, and made the desert smile. From this
+it must appear that the lands of Texas, although nominally given, were
+in fact really and clearly bought. It may here be premised that a gift
+of lands by a nation to foreigners on condition of their immigrating and
+becoming citizens, is immensely different from a gift by one individual to
+another. In the case of individuals, the donor loses all further claim or
+ownership over the thing bestowed. But in our case, the government only
+gave wild lands, that they might be redeemed from a state of nature; that
+the obstacles to a first settlement might be overcome; that they might be
+rid of those savages who continually depredated upon the inhabited parts
+of the nation, and that they might be placed in a situation to augment
+the physical strength and power and revenue of the republic. Is it not
+evident that Mexico now holds over the colonized lands of Texas, the
+same jurisdiction and right of property which all nations hold over the
+inhabited parts of their territory? But to do away more effectually the
+idea that the colonists of Texas are under great obligations to the Mexican
+government for their donations of land, let us examine at what price the
+government estimated the lands given. Twelve or thirteen years ago, they
+gave to a colonist one league of laud for coming, he paying the government
+$30, and this year (1835) they have sold hundreds of leagues of land for
+$50 each. So that it appears that the government really gave us what in
+their estimation was worth $20. A true statement of facts then is all that
+is necessary to pay at once that immense debt of endless gratitude which,
+in the estimation of the ignorant and interested is due from the colonists
+to the government. I pass over the toil and suffering and danger which
+attended the redemption and cultivation of their lands by the colonists,
+and turn to their civil condition and to the conduct and history of the
+government. It is a maxim no less venerable for its antiquity than its
+truth--a maxim admitted and illustrated by all writers on political
+economy--and one that has been corroborated by experience in every corner
+of the earth, that miserable is the servitude and horrible the condition
+of that people whose laws are either uncertain or unknown. I ask, with
+a defiance of contradiction, if ours is not and has not always been, in
+Texas, the unhappy condition and miserable bondage spoken of in this
+maxim? Who of us knows or can by possibility arrive at a knowledge of the
+laws that govern our property and lives? Who of us is able to read and
+understand and be entirely confident of the validity of his title to the
+land he lives on, and which he has redeemed from a state of nature by the
+most indefatigable industry and perseverance? Who knows whether he has paid
+on his land all that government exacts, or whether he has not paid ten
+times as much? Look at the mere mockery of all law and justice which has
+always prevailed in place of an able and learned judiciary. Alcaldes, most
+of them unlearned in any system of jurisprudence, and unconversant with
+legal proceedings of any description, have been elected to administer a
+code, scattered through hundreds of volumes and written in languages of
+which they did not understand one word.
+
+Who among us is able to confer with his rulers; to represent his wants
+and grievances; to ask advice, or recommend salutary changes? Have we had
+more than one or two organs of communication with the government, and must
+not they have been omniscient to have always understood the wishes of the
+people, and incorruptible to have always correctly represented them? Who
+of us feels or ever has felt any reliance or can place any confidence in
+governmental matters, or can predict with any sort of certainty what in
+this respect a day may bring forth? There are thousands of other evils
+growing out of our present situation, too hourly, universally and bitterly
+felt to require to be mentioned. Who will say that these things do not
+exist? Who will say that we have not suffered the harassing uncertainty and
+miserable bondage here represented?
+
+When the people of the United States commenced their war for independence
+against Great Britain, the friends of Britain charged them with
+ingratitude. They said that Britain had founded the colonies at great
+expense--had increased a load of debt by wars on their account--had
+protected their commerce, &c. This cannot be said of Mexico. Not one dollar
+has she spent for Texas--not one Mexican soldier has ever fought by our
+side in expelling the savages. She has given us no protection whatever;
+and as allegiance and protection are reciprocal, we have a right on this
+principle to cast off her yoke. However, in my next I pledge myself to
+demonstrate that the Mexicans are wholly incapable of self-government,
+and that on that principle we are bound by the first law of
+nature--self-preservation--to dissolve all connexion, and take care of
+ourselves.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+No. II.
+
+
+I now proceed to demonstrate that the Mexicans are wholly incapable of
+self-government, and that our liberties, our fortunes and our lives are
+insecure so long as we are connected with them. At the onset I cannot but
+advert to the spirit of prophecy and truth with which that unequalled
+expounder and defender of the rights of man, Mr. Jefferson, spoke more than
+18 years ago in regard to this very matter. In a letter to the Marquis de
+Lafayette, dated Monticello, 14th May, 1817, he says, "I wish I could
+give you better hopes of our Mexican brethren. The achievement of their
+independence of old Spain is no longer a question. But it is a very serious
+one what will then become of them. Ignorance and bigotry, like other
+insanities, are incapable of self-government. They will fall under military
+despotism, and become the murderous tools of their respective Bonapartes.
+No one I hope can doubt my wish to see them and all mankind exercising
+self-government. But the question is not what we wish--but what is
+practicable. As their sincere friend, then, I do believe the best thing
+for them would be to come to an accord with Spain, under the guarantee of
+France, Russia, Holland, and the United States, allowing to Spain a nominal
+supremacy, with authority only to keep the peace among them, leaving them
+otherwise all the powers of self-government, until their experience, their
+education, and their emancipation from their Priests should prepare them
+for complete independence." Jefferson's works, vol. 4, page 303. Mr.
+Jefferson well knew that from the discovery of America to the date of his
+letter, the Mexicans had unfortunately been the persecuted, pillaged, and
+priest-ridden slaves of the kings of Spain--a line of kings, with but
+few exceptions, more inimical to the rights of man, more opposed to the
+advancement of truth, and light, and liberty, more practised in tyranny,
+more hardened in crime, more infatuated with superstition, and more
+benighted with ignorance, than any other monsters that ever disgraced
+a throne in christendom, since the revival of letters. Yes, humanity
+shudders, and freedom burns with indignation at a recital of the
+barbarities and oppressions practised upon the ill-fated Mexicans from the
+bloody days of Cortes up to the termination of their connexion with Spain.
+The produce of their cultivated fields was rifled--the natural products of
+their forests pillaged--the bowels of their earth ransacked, and their
+suffering families impoverished to glut the grandeur and enrich the coffers
+of their trans-Atlantic oppressors. To make their miserable servitude less
+perceptible, they were denied the benefits of the commonest education,
+and were kept the blind devotees of the darkest and most demoralizing
+superstition that ever clouded the intellects, or degraded the morals
+of mankind. From this it is evident, that up to the period of their
+independence, having been so long destitute of education, so long
+unaccustomed to think or legislate for themselves, and so long under the
+complete dominion of their liberty-hating Priests, they must have been
+totally unacquainted with the plainest principles of self-government. Let
+us examine what their subsequent opportunities of improvement have been.
+
+At the close of the revolution, Iturbide, by fraud and force, caused
+himself to be proclaimed Emperor, who after much commotion, was dethroned,
+banished and shot. After this Victoria was elected President, during all
+of whose administration the country was distracted with civil wars and
+conspiracies, as is evidenced by the rebellion and banishment of Montano,
+Bravo, and many others. Victoria's term having expired, Pedraza was
+constitutionally elected, but was dispossessed by violence, and Guerero
+put in his stead. Guerero was scarcely seated before Bustamente with open
+war deposed him, put him to death and placed himself at the head of the
+government. Bustamente was hardly in the chair before Santa Anna, warring,
+as he pretended, for the constitution and for making it still more liberal,
+dispossessed him by deluging the country in a civil war, the horrors of
+which have not at this moment ended. Since his accession we have been
+woful witnesses that nothing but turmoil, anarchy and revolution have
+overshadowed the land, and that at last he has at one fell stroke, with
+an armed soldiery, turned congress out of doors, dissolved that body
+and proclaimed that the constitution is no more. Here, then, we have a
+lamentable verification of the fears and predictions of that great apostle
+of human liberty, Mr. Jefferson. His prophecy in relation to the result of
+their governmental experiment, implies in him an almost superhuman forecast
+and knowledge of the elements essential to self-government. He knew that
+they were too ignorant and too much under the dominion of their priests at
+the period of their declaration, and he but too truly foresaw that owing to
+the unhallowed ambition of their military aspirants, the country would be
+too continually distracted with revolutions to admit of their advancement
+in education or any useful knowledge whatever. Time has developed it. There
+has been no attention on the part of government to schools or other useful
+institutions. The present generation are as ignorant and bigoted as the
+past one, and so will continue each succeeding one to the end of time,
+unless some philanthropic and enlightened citizen shall arrive at power
+with a purity of patriotism and reach of intellect unexampled among his
+countrymen, and with energies of character sufficiently commanding to
+emancipate the nation from the thraldom of her priests--to curb or kill her
+countless military aspirants, thereby preventing incessant revolutions, and
+thereby enabling a new generation to experience the benefits of education
+and to qualify themselves in other respects for complete self-government.
+I have now gone through with the administration, or rather
+mal-administration, of the General Government. It is equally demonstrable
+that so far as Texas is concerned, there have been equal confusion,
+insecurity and injustice in the administration of the State governments.
+Texas, as is known, forms an integral part of the State known by the name
+of Coahuila and Texas. During the past year there were three persons
+claiming and fighting for the office of Governor of this State. There was
+no session of the legislature at the regular period, on account of this
+civil war, and fifteen officers of the federal troops elected a governor
+of their own over the head of the one elected by the people. At an
+extraordinary time the legislature was convoked, and fraudulently sold for
+a thousandth part of their value, millions of acres of our public domain.
+This legislature was finally dispersed by the threats of the General
+Government, and our Governor and one of the members were, on their retreat,
+arrested and imprisoned by the troops of the permanent army--leaving us
+involved in chaotic anarchy. Do not these facts conclusively demonstrate an
+incapability of self-government on the part of the Mexicans? Do they not
+cry aloud for an immediate dissolution of all connexion with them as the
+only rock of our salvation? Yes, the vital importance of a declaration of
+Independence is as clearly indicated by them as if it were "written in
+sunbeams on the face of heaven."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+No. III.
+
+ANALYSIS OF THE MEXICAN FEDERAL CONSTITUTION OF 1824.
+
+
+It has been wisely remarked by that great illustrator of the machinery
+of governments, (Montesquieu) that there can be no liberty where the
+legislative, executive, and judicial powers, or any two of them, are united
+in the same person or body of persons. See Spirit of Laws, in reference to
+the English Constitution. If any corroboration of this high authority is
+needed, I will refer to Mr. Jefferson, and the writers of that invaluable
+text book, the Federalist. Mr. Jefferson, in his Notes on Virginia, page
+195, says the concentration of legislative, executive and judicial powers
+in the same hands, is precisely the definition of despotism. And in the
+Federalist, page 261, it is said, "the accumulation of these powers in
+the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary,
+self-appointed, or elective, is the very definition of tyranny." In the
+same great work it is clearly demonstrated, that if each department is
+not so fortified in its powers as to prevent infringement by the others,
+the constitution which creates them all will be worth no more than the
+parchment upon which it is written. So important was it deemed by all the
+states of the Union to keep these departments distinct, and in different
+hands, that it has been specially provided for in all their constitutions.
+See the constitutions of the different States. And yet in the face of all
+this wisdom and experience, and contrary to every thing that is republican
+in its nature, the framers of the Mexican constitution have reserved to
+Congress the sole power of construing the constitutionality of its acts.
+This, it will be readily seen, is an entire nullification of the judiciary
+in all constitutional matters, and leaves the rights of the people and the
+constitution itself without any other security than what is to be found
+in the virtue, patriotism and intelligence of Congress. What slender
+reliances, where the liberties and happiness of a nation are concerned! If
+in the United States Congress should transcend its powers in the passage
+of a law, the courts would declare it null and void, and bring back
+Congress to a constitutional discharge of its duties. But if the same
+thing were attempted in Mexico, Congress would re-enact the law, declare
+it constitutional, and imprison the judge for his presumption. It appears
+then, that the Mexican constitution of 1824 contains within itself the
+seeds of its own destruction,--for the accumulation of legislative and
+judicial powers in Congress, and the enabling of that body to violate the
+constitution at will, renders it of no more avail than "a sounding brass
+or tinkling cymbal." It will be no alleviation, says Mr. Jefferson, in his
+work above quoted, page 195, that in the case of Congress unlimited powers
+are vested in a plurality of hands. One hundred or two hundred despots are
+surely as oppressive as one. Let those who doubt it turn their eyes on the
+republic of Venice. In the next place I will show, that independent of this
+objection, the Mexican constitution contains principles and provisions 500
+years behind the liberalized views of the present age, and at war with
+every thing that is akin to civil or religious liberty. In that instrument
+the powers of government, instead of being divided as they are in the
+United States, and other civilized countries, into legislative, executive
+and judicial, are divided into military, ecclesiastical and civil,
+and these two first are fortified with exclusive privileges, and made
+predominant. It is specially declared that the Roman Catholic religion
+is, and forever shall be, the established religion of the land. No other
+is tolerated, and no one can be a citizen without professing it. Can
+any people be capable of self-government--can they know any thing about
+republicanism, who will, in this enlightened age endeavor to erect the
+military over the civil--to bind the conscience in chains, and to enforce
+an absolute subscription to the dogmas of any religious sect--but more
+especially of that sect, which has waged an unceasing warfare against
+liberty, whenever the ignorance and superstition of mankind have given it
+a foothold?
+
+Can republicans live under a constitution containing such unhallowed
+principles? All will say they cannot. And if the Texan colonists are
+willing to do so a moment longer than they are able to shake off the yoke,
+they are unworthy the sympathies or assistance of any free people--they are
+unworthy descendants of those canonized heroes of the American revolution,
+who fought, and bled, and conquered for religious as well as civil liberty,
+and who established the sacred principle, that "all men have a right to
+worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their consciences." Yet
+bad as this constitution is, it has been swept away by, if possible, a
+worse form of government, the central. This system, now attempted to be
+rivetted upon the people of Texas, has preserved most of the bad features
+of the old constitution, viz: the preponderance of the military and clergy,
+and has destroyed all of the good features, to wit: the representation of
+the people through the medium of Congress, and the division of the republic
+into States. The whole of the States are now consolidated into one, and
+governed by a dictator and council of about a dozen, who are the creatures
+of his will, and the flatterers of his lawless despotism. All of Mexico,
+but Texas, has submitted to this, and she is waging a war against it with
+all the energies of an infant and much oppressed people. If it be asked,
+why have the people of Texas submitted so long to such a constitution,
+I answer, that for the first few years their numbers or wealth did
+not attract the notice or cupidity of government. 2dly, the incessant
+revolutions of Mexico kept their attention from Texas for many years more.
+3dly, they submitted from physical inability to resist. And 4thly, they
+were determined to prove themselves a law and oath abiding people, and in
+case of rupture with Mexico, to show to the world that they were not the
+aggressors. This rupture has been brought about, and it is folly to think
+of ever healing the breach. The constitution has been destroyed, and it is
+idle to think of restoring it. If restored, I have shown that no republican
+can live under it. We have no right to conclude, that if re-established,
+it will be amended so as to be made more republican and more congenial
+with our wishes--for in all their changes and commotions, each party
+contends for the established religion--it is the last thing they will part
+with--believing it to be the anchor of their hope and salvation here and
+hereafter. But granting that the federal party should triumph--that the
+monster centralism should be crushed, and that the constitution should be
+amended so as to make it appear, on parchment, the most unexceptionable
+charter of human rights known to the world, have we any reason to believe
+or to hope, from their demonstrated incapacity of self-government, and from
+their incessant past revolutions, that it will be or can be administered
+for a day? But, as I before said, it is idle to talk of the constitution
+now. _Texas must be Independent_. The tie between her and Mexico is
+severed, and that by the injustice and violence of Mexico. It can never be
+re-united--for between the colonists and Mexicans there is an almost total
+dissimilarity of soil, climate, productions, pursuits, interests, habits,
+manners, education, language and religion.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+No. IV.
+
+
+In my last I contended that none of those ties which are necessary to bind
+a people together and make them one, existed between the colonists and
+Mexicans. That there was an almost total dissimilarity in the soil, climate
+and productions of the regions of territory they respectively inhabited;
+and that superadded to this, there was no identity of pursuits, habits,
+manners, education, language or religion. I now proceed to show, that these
+circumstances have engendered towards the colonists in the, mass of the
+Mexican nation, feelings of unconquerable jealousy and hostility. Yes!
+our superiority in enterprise, in learning, in the arts and in all that
+can dignify life, or embellish human nature, instead of exciting in
+them a laudable ambition to emulate, to equal, or excel us--excites the
+most hateful of all the passions--envy--and has caused them to endeavor
+for years past, by an unremitting series of vexatious, oppressive and
+unconstitutional acts, to retard our growth and prosperity, and if
+possible, to get rid altogether of a people whose presence so hourly
+reminds them of their own ignorance and inferiority. Some of these acts I
+now proceed to enumerate.
+
+1st. With a sickly philanthropy worthy of the abolitionists of these United
+States, they have, contrary to justice, and to law, intermeddled with our
+slave population, and have even impotently threatened in the war now
+pending, to emancipate them, and induce them to turn their arms against
+their masters. If they would cast their eyes around them, they would find
+that at home the more wealthy and intelligent of the Mexicans have unjustly
+imposed upon at least one quarter of their fellow citizens, the most
+galling and illegal system of servitude that ever stained the annals of
+human oppression.
+
+2d. [Footnote: Have been repealed.] Although the colonization law conceded
+to emigrants to Texas all the rights and privileges of citizens, in 1829 a
+law was passed confining the retail of merchandize to native born Mexicans.
+It is useless to comment upon the illegality and injustice of this law. It
+speaks for itself, and clearly indicates the diabolical spirit in which it
+was engendered.
+
+3d. I pass over many minor grievances growing out of their illegal
+legislative enactments, and plainly denoting their settled hostility, and
+come to the law of the 6th [Footnote: Have been repealed.] of April, 1830.
+By this law, North Americans, and they alone, were forbidden ad mission
+into Texas. This was enough to blast all of our hopes, and dishearten
+all of our enterprise. It showed to us that we were to remain scattered,
+isolated, and unhappy tenants of the wilderness--compelled to gaze upon
+the resources of a lovely and fertile region, undeveloped for want of
+population. That we were to be cut off forever from the society of fathers
+and friends in the United States of the North--to prepare comforts suited
+to whose age and infirmities, many of us had emigrated and patiently
+submitted to every species of privation, and whose presence to gladden our
+firesides we were hourly anticipating. That feature of this law granting
+admission to all other nations except our brethren of the United States
+of the North, was sufficient to goad us on to madness. Yes! the door of
+emigration to Texas was closed upon the only sister republic worthy of the
+name which Mexico could boast of in this new world. It was closed upon a
+people among whom the knowledge and the foundations of rational liberty are
+more deeply laid than among any other on the habitable globe. It was closed
+upon a people who would have carried with them to Texas those principles
+of freedom, and those ideas of self-government in which, from their birth,
+they had been educated and practised. In short, and more than all, inasmuch
+as it stamps the Mexican government with the foul blot of ingratitude,
+it was closed upon a people who generously and heroically aided them in
+their revolutionary struggle, and who were first and foremost to recognize
+and rejoice at the consummation of their independence. Nothing but envy,
+jealousy, and a predetermination to destroy the colonial settlements, could
+have prompted the passage of this most iniquitous law. Simultaneous with
+it, all parts of Texas were deluged with garrisons in a time of profound
+peace. These garrisons extorted and consumed the substance of the land,
+and paid for their supplies in drafts on a faithless and almost bankrupt
+government. In their presence and vicinity the civil arm was paralyzed
+and powerless. They imprisoned our citizens without cause, and detained
+them without trial, and in every respect trampled upon our rights and
+privileges. They could not have been sent to Texas for our protection,
+for when they came we had expelled the savages, and were able to protect
+ourselves; and at the commencement of the colonial settlements, when we
+were few and weak, and scattered, and defenceless, not a garrison--no! not
+a soldier came to our assistance.
+
+As another evidence of the hostility of the Mexicans to the Colonists, I
+will instance the following:
+
+On the 7th of May, 1824, when the Republic was divided into States by the
+constituent Congress, the territory called Texas, not being sufficiently
+populous for a Slate, was united to Coahuila, but it was specially decreed
+by Congress that whenever Texas was sufficiently populous to figure as a
+State, she should make it known and be admitted. In 1833, the people of
+Texas, knowing that their numbers exceeded those of several of the old
+States, in solemn convention formed a constitution, and sent on a delegate
+to the city of Mexico, praying that Texas be admitted as a State. Instead
+of granting this just and legal request, they imprisoned our delegate in
+the dungeons of the Inquisition, and detained him without a trial for more
+than a year, deprived of the common air and common use of his own limbs!
+Under all of those multiplied oppressions, the colonists, from a spirit of
+forbearance, or rather from physical inability to resist, long groaned and
+languished. Not a voice, not an arm was uplifted. The wheels of government
+were not retarded in their operation by us. We consoled ourselves with
+the pleasing but delusive hope that a returning sense of liberality and
+justice would give to these obnoxious laws a brief duration. While laying
+this flattering unction to their souls, while indulging dreams of fancied
+felicity never to be realized, the dictator, Santa Anna, developed his
+tyrannical course. He surrounded Congress with an armed force, dissolved
+the body, and declared the constitution at an end. He dispersed our State
+Legislature by violence, imprisoned our Governor, demanded the arrest of
+some of the unoffending colonists, to be tried by military tribunals for
+(if any) civil offences, disarmed the militia, leaving only one gun to 500
+citizens, and sent an army of mercenaries into Texas to rivet upon us the
+chains of centralism. When these glaring oppressions were attempted to be
+practised, the people of Texas felt that the cup of their bitterness was
+full to overflowing--that the rod of persecution had smitten sufficiently
+severe, and that they could no longer submit without relinquishing forever
+the glorious appellation of freemen. They struck, and struck with the
+potent arm of _liberty_. They conquered and drove the enemy from their
+soil. They wish not to wage a war of cupidity and conquest. They only ask
+to be permitted to govern the territory they occupy after the republican
+mode of their fathers. If this, their reasonable demand, is not conceded,
+they will carry the war into the enemy's country, and force the tyrant (as
+they have the power to do,) to acknowledge the independence of Texas within
+the very walls of his capital. After so many descriptions it is useless to
+discuss the capability of Texas to figure as an independent government.
+Suffice it to say, that it is larger than France, England, Scotland and
+Ireland united--of more general fertility, and susceptible of a greater and
+denser population.                                           CURTIUS.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Texas, by William H. Wharton
+
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