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 1822, 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.
