18
THE AUSTIN PAPERS
short time more) so that you must not suffer yourselves to be unhappy on my account. Since the arrival of Col. Almonte there is evidently a very favorable change in my favor-incorrect opinions and erroneous ideas which have originated in false rumors and reports circulated by the enemies of Texas, have been corrected by Almonte's statements. He speaks .of Texas i1I1par- tially and so far as I can learn very favourably, .and I have no doubt that he is exerting himself all he can in my favor. The forms of judicial pro- ceedings in this country are so very complicated and slow, that I cannot say with any certainty when my case will be brought to a conclusion. .I think howeve~ that I can assure you, that it will be in all next month. at most and that the result will be a full and complete acquital, so that I shall probably be able to reach Monclova in all the month of J anua:.-;- or be• ginning of February. I shall in all probability complete two years absence from home. They have been, so far, painful ones to me. Such as I would not have passed for any individual benefit whatever. I hope the past events will have a good and salutary influence in making every body in That country more disposed to reason and reflect[ion] before they yield to excitements. I have always been of the opinion that a silent and quiet course was the true one for Texas. I wished to see it grow up in tranquility like an oak sapling in the midst of a thick forest, which protects it while slender and weak from the storm, until it rears its head above the rest with a sturdy trunk and firmly rooted foundation, that en• ables it to defy the storms, and rely upon its own matured strengtl;t. The excitement of the last few years/ o~ced me out of that quiet and silent policy much against my judgement-but it was unavoidable, I could not help it. Those excitements were not without sufficient cause, if the causes were to be tested solely by abstract principles, but I believed them to be impolitic and ill timed. The prosperity of Texas was much too near my heart to see it, even by probability, jeopardised in any manner. There were men of influence in various parts of tliis nation who were willing to paralise _ the progress of Texas, but they could not attack it, without cause, or at least a plausible pretext. I wished to avoid giving them such a pretext- On the other hand there were many ambitious men who wished to figure and become "great men" by means of commotions or revolutions in Texas in which they expected to rise and make fortunes as leaders, .out of the hard' earnings of the old settlers, who would have been the mere instruments of such leaders, and their victims. I wished to save the old settlers, who had suffered so much to redeem that country from the wilderness, from such friends and from the evils of commotions. My ambition has been of the silent, and not the boisterous kind. I preferred seeing a new log c~bbin and field rise up in the wilderness, to making a noise as the leader, or participator of an excitement or revolution.
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