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em States; & form and prevailing sentimt of that portion of the American population who control the national legislation of the country And shall we blindly & madly precipitate ourselves into the deadly and destroying embraces of such a baleful people. Are we prepar.d to recive our laws from their hands and to hold our rights and our institutions by the tenure of their clemency & justice, whilst we can enjoy tr.anquility and safety under a better governmt of our own creation 1 We have been told by them distinctly that they will not receive us as brethren - that our country is but the honie of the wicked and the worthless, where vice is pestilential and virtue laughed to scorn; and yet like the spanial that licks the han_d that assails him, we continue knocking for admission at the door from which we are abruptly ordered with indignity and insult. As conclusive as these reasons are, they do not constitute the only objections to a further prosecution of the proposition for annexation on the part of this Republic. ..When the overture was made by our Minister at Washington City to the American government, the Sec- retary of State under the instructions of the President of the United States, declined in the most prompt and decisive manner to con- sider the question of annexation u1nti~ our Independence should be acknowledged by Mexico, lest it might involve them in a war with that government. Our Minister with that m;mly spirit of independ- ence which became the representative of a free people, declined to press the negociation farther; and it sems to me that we can not, with any shew of national pride or dignity of character, renew the negociation, whilst smarting under the rebuff of the American Presi- dent. It will also be perceived by a reference to the Report of the Committee Foreign Relations adopted by our own Congress in the fall of 1836, that it was not contemplated to press the measure of annexation, after the fourth of March 1837. If the American Govt. was not disposed to receive us in the Federal Union by that date, the President of Texas, was authorized to send ministers to Great Britan and France to claim the recognition of our Independence and to enter into such commercial treaties as would best comport with the interests and safety of the Republic. In furtherence of this policy a Minister has been dispatched for some mouths to the Court of St James under the authority of the Congress to carry out the views suggested by that committee. Thus we behold two conflicting nego- ciations going on at the same moment. ·whilst we are courting an acknowlegmt of our independence from one nation, we .are seeking to throw ourselves into the arms of another. Still there are those who perceive in this conduct nothing reprehensible; nothing detri- mental to our own character or insulting to the dignity others. Under these circumstances what hope can we have that our mission to Great Britian will prove successful? And if contr.ary to all rca- sbnable expectation favorable Foreign relations with her-should be established, would it not be a gross insult to that power, and a mani- fest violation of good faith on the part of this Republic to discard the friendship and reject the stipulations, uniting with another governmt. I have never doubted that it was the policy of Great Britian, both in a commercial & political point of view, to acknowledge our Jude-
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