384
TEXAS STATE LIBRARY
No. 968
[18381], ANONYMOUS. NOTES ON THE PACIFIC COAST POLICY OF TEXAS Our national recognition by the cardinal powers of Europe must be paramount in our policy as it will be the most pregnant with results. For it will superinduce our enemy; invoke emigration and establish credits. Russia appears to 0 be a point the most interesting in the achievement of this object. She is not influenced by the slave question nor deterred by the revolt of her own colonies. Nor is she checked by the popular clamour or inflamed by the prejudices of England. She is also exempt from the counteractive influence of France from british alliance, and from those internal causes which influence both those nations in neutralising the free and dignified use· of Sovereign power on this subject; She has also active motives which if awakened would. lead her to the recognition of Texas. She has. an interesting question of Territory with the united States of America our border neighbor which from the lapse of the ten-years ad interem arrangement and the refusal of Rusia to extend it, and a difference of the two countries as to its construction, has ripened into a dis- pute somewhat impracticable between them and which would induce in either a conciliatory policy towards any power which now has or may hereafter ha-ve physical power near them. Texas by being the nearest martial country assumed this attitude and particularly as to Russia as her claim, or rather unrefracterary and not territorial position on a point of the pacific bank would be embraced by and become in some shape connected with our prospective rights on the pacific shore. Rusia has constructed a strong fortification and it is now garrisoned by two battalions of regular troops ori about the· 27th. degree of north !attitude on the bank of the pacific; but this is proclaimed to be for the sole purpose of the Fur and seal trade, a-ltho' it may now be used to superinduce the United States on the· existing question before referred to. Our claims and demonstrations on the pacific bank and the dominion between are present imperfect !ins and that bank would naturally be from about the 25th. to the 42d. degrees of north !attitude; and I think we are fully entitled to this position by the law and usages of nations as to other countries, if asserted in time, and by the law of war as to our enemy. The· provisions of a law which I have submitted to the Honorable the Congress of Texas on the subject of block and trading houses to the pacific shore would materially lead to the maturity of our rights. to the dominion between the factitious and unbinding boundaries of · the San Jacinto treaty, as it is called, on that shore. It is contem- plated to accomplish this by the interposition of british capital, which it is well know always enlists the conciliatory policy and friendly interest of England. It will be seen in a glance that this policy promptly .taken and intelligently developed and enforced by Texas would give her a position both new and interesting to foreign nations, but particularly to the United States, Rusia and England, while it would not be without its effect upon the public enemy. It
Powered by FlippingBook