278
THE AUSTIN PAPERS
merit of having given them away -to the Texians ! These lands and this country, at the commencement of the settlement, fourteen years ago, were valueless, and so considered by the general government, they became the sole property of the state of Coahuila and Texas, and the state alone had the power to dispose of them. The state authorities have always considered them to he valueless; a proof of which is the manner ·in which they have been disposed of, given away for nothing to native Mexicans, in eleven league tracts, and sold to them and to the colonists (for all the land ac- quired by foreign settlers was sold to them by the state,) at from thirty to one hundred dollars per square league. In 1833, thirty square leagues of land were voted by the late legislators, to a young man (who had previously received a grant of eleven leagues)-, as pay for one year's salary, for his services as judge! 2 Some eight hundred square leagues were sold by these legislators, in 1834 and 1835, to speculators, principally foreigners, and to themselves; for the same legislators who passed the law for a part of this sale, were purchasers, at from about fifty to seventy-five and a hundred dollars per square league.s It is not my intention to cast any censure on the legislators of Coahuila, or on the individuals who purchased; the object of the former was to raise funds out of the sale of Texas lands, to replenish the state treasure which was empty..:.....the latter were speculators, whose object was to take advan• tage of any law or circumstance that favored their views. I have men- tioned this subject to prove more clearly the fact that all the legislation of both general and state governments,· on the subject of Texas lands, has been based on the full belief that they were valueless, and that the nation and the state were great gainers by getting this wilderness settled, so as to have a barrier against Indians, without any cost whatever to the nation, on the contrary, with the gain of from thirty to one hundred dollars per square league. There never has been any· kind of organization in Texas, that merits even the name of a goverrunnt, at least not since the year 1827. The moral principle of the people governed them, and kept the country quiet>. Peace prevailed in this country, until last May; in that month, a revolu- tionary hall was thrown into it by the state authorities of Mon,clova, all val-ient Mexicans; and since then, not a month, indeed scarcely a week has passed, without some act on the part of the general government or its authorities, to increase the irritation, and hurry this country into revolu- tion, or into anarchy and ruin, so as to involve it in a war, to which they give the character of a national one against foreign adventurers. And yet, according to the general government of Mexico, the people of Texas alone 2Thomas Jefferson Chambel'!I. &See "Land Speculation as a Cause of the Texas Revolution," by the editor, in Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, X, 76-95.
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