270
AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
A General Commissioner has lntely been appointed for the whole of Texas who will shortly be on here. I presume that his appoint- ment will supercede all other appointments of Commissioners, also a Surveyor-General has been appointed, who will be on with the General-Commissioner. If you have not already procured the Colonization law of this State I will send it to you as soon as it can be published in English in the Texal? Gazette; a.ncl by comparing this statement with the law you will see that it_is correct. It may be late in the winter before it is published for there are some other laws which it is highly important to get out in English before the elections in December, for owing to the want of a pri;nting press it has heretofore been impossible to publish them. _ The colonization business is the last on earth that any man ought to undertake for the sole purpose of making money; and no Empre- snrio will ever advance one step if no other motive than· money influence him-for he will not undergo the labor and receive the abuse for all he can make-that [is] he will not advance 7egally. No Empresario ever had such an opportunity of ma.king a fortune by imposing on the ignorance and credulity of capitalists in other countries as I have hn.d, for no one of them ever had the power that I had; but instead of leaving my settlers to shift for them- selves, and instead of distorting the law to mislead others and benefit myself, I have remained here and shared the toils of settling a wilder- ness, and have rigidly adhered to the law and my .duty to this Government. And I have also_,succeeded in layi1_1g a permanent foundation for the settlement of Texas by an enterprising popu- lation, and the day is not far distant when it will become the 1ichest and most powerful, State of the Mexican Confederation. But I am poo1' I have not even the means of living with comfort and that de- cency which my situation would seem to require, unless I raise those means by a sacrifice of a part of my premium land so hardly earned, and that I will not do for it is my only stake for my old age. Will it not appear strange to you that altliough s-ucl,, is my real situation an opinion has gone abroad that I have made myself r~ch by what I received from the settlers or rather by selling land to them as the uninformed and ignorant ha~e styled the fees which I was by law entitled to as Commissioner, and for surveying, etc, etc. Strange as ' it may seem it is nevertheless -a fact, the majority of the s<'ttlers were .unable to pay anything, and must have left the country if the :fees had been exacted from them promptly, and in order to keep all afl(?at I did exact prompt pa.yment from those who were able to make it, and out of the money thus raised I paid the way of the poor who were unable to pay a.ny thing, .and I also defrayed the expenses of the administration of the local Government, and was enabled to keep the Indians f,riendly by presents and :feeding them
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