THE AUSTIN PAPERS. 1543 sons violated, our liberties trampled under foot, and ourselves the destined and immediate victims of the Spanish or Mexican bayonet,;; we have sprung to arms for our safety. No longer secure in our properties and our Jives, and having long since ceased to hope for liberty and justice under this imbecile, this faithless nnd perfidious Government, we have planted the standard of liberty and Independence for our protection with a firm and solemn resolve to live or perish with it. Self preservation, the great law of nature, is our justification for planting it thus early, and before we could formally invite our fellow citizens to concur with us in this important matter. Not only the threats of those pretty [sic] tyrants here, who have so long trampled upon the rights of your brother Americans, but the official communica- tions of the Government themselves, now in our possession, prove, that we were selected as the victims of destruction, and that a brutal soldiery were soon to be let loose upon us. Could we any longer hesitate what course to pursue1 No! fellow citizens! You would have done the same. Your properties taken without process, your liberties invaded, your persons violated at the point of the bayonet without even the forms of trial, and yourselves threatened with butchery and extermination, as we have been, you too would have planted the standard of your own security and protection. The .same necessity has made it expedient for us without delay to make a conditional treaty with the Indians on our North. This Government, it seems, had made them verbal promises of grants, which with them are considered binding. They have under this fatal confidence emigrated to the North of this province in great numbers. They like many of us have been treacherously deceived by this corrupt Government, and have long since resolved to occupy the lands which were promised to them. In this state of things, despairing of any chance for our rights and our liberties, and even of protection against an external foe, and finding it all important at this portentious moment to our security and to the establishment of that Independence, which we have resolved to effect, and which we believe every reflecting man in this province has looked forward to, as an event inevitable sooner or later; we have been compelled without delay to make such a conditional treaty, as has secured to the Americans the friendship of their red brethren, and the success of that cause, which we have undertaken. In making this com'pact with the Indians, we had to designate n boundary line, both parties agreeing on their parts to respect it. In this treaty the rights of every man in either territory are guar- anteed to him, and are to be most scrupulously observed. The treaty, in short, is such a one, as we doubt not, when all things nre under-
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