469
THE AUSTIN PAPERS
I have performed many services to the people of my Colonies and to Texas in general, and I consider that few of them was of more essential and vital importance, than this one of procuring this colonization contract, and keeping off the foreign companies. The above is a correct statement of facts, so far as I have had anything to do in person with these transactions. As to the acts of others performed during my absence from the country, or without my knowledge, I have nothing to do with them, and am not responsible for them. . I have been compelled to rely principally on my own recollection in making the foregoing statements many of which are only sustained by my own word. My unofficial correspondence with Genl. Teran, the Governor of the State, the Political Chief of Bexar, and others would prove the most of them, but my private papers were scattered, and many of them destroyed, during the invasion, and I have not yet collected and arranged the frag- ments that have been saved. These matters were however so notorious at the time they occurred that several persons were ·acquainted with them. I therefore assert positively that so far from having injured or attempted to injure the Nashville Company, or Robinson [Robertson] I have uni- formly endeavored to serve them, and have served them more than any other man living, in the most critical times, and even at the hazard of in- juring myself and jeopardizing the best interests of Texas. When I was in Nashville last winter some of the gentlemen who were members of the Company expressed to me their approbation of my conduct towards them. The fact is the fault was in them, in not settling the Colony as they might have done from 1825 to 1830. Had they done only half as much to settle the country above the San Antonio road, as I have done below, (and their means were greater than mine ever were) the physical strength of Texas, and the situation of our frontier settlements, would have been very different from what it now is. Ever since 1830, I foresaw that an open breach with Mexico was in- evitable. It was, however, of the greatest important to keep it off as long as possible, in order to gain time and strength. No one in Texas was more anxious than myself to have the country settled, and especially the upper Colony, for the safety of my Colonies below from Indian depredations de- pended upon it. I therefore never had any object in view in procuring the contract of Austin and Williams but the public good. The same principle governs me still, and so far as my own personal interest is concerned, no impediments will be thrown in the way by me to any adjustment of this matter that Congress may deem equitable and necessary. But I have no power to dispose of or in any manner compromit or relinquish the rights and interests of others. For example amongst those who obtained authority
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