]22
TEXAS S·rA'l'E LlBR.\RY
an entrance here, the most disagreeable notice made me hastily leave Bexar for this town where I arriYed yesterday. Such is the illtimed rising of some of your fellow-citizens, under the uncertain and obscure pretext of demanding five or more individ- uals, whom the military Commandant of Anahuac, Colonel John Davis Bradburn holds as prisoners in the fortification which he commands for Causes or-motives which it is impossible to know without an inves• tigation. It is a rising isolated without bases and without fixed and reasonable principles, and, worse than all, it has been excited by a very diminative part of the inhabitants against the high dignity of the nation, and in the manifest Violation of the rights of a large and respectable majority of these news settlements, whose principal and great Colonial rights and interests ought to have been, and are, in the present situation of the County, to assure and satisfy the General and particular governments of their adopted Country, that 01·der, good faith, and gratitude alone reign in their bossoms, those precious endowments, which can be despised only by Violent and desperate men who have nothing to lose and who, upon the ruins of the good and grateful would wish to rise. Fellow Citizens, encouraged by your intelligence and Convinced of your republicanism, I will express my opinion to yon with frankness. The rising to which the Character has been given of being directed only against one military Commandant, is for this reason not the less indicorous, inadmissible and in every point of view wrong, because the demands of the People ought to be directed against measm·es and not men; and even in this case it is not lawfnll for a faction to assume to themselves the rights of the majority, or demands with arms in their liands, that which ought only be sought by the tract which the laws have marked out. Fellow citizens, a dreadfull cloud of suffe1·ing hangs with a threat- ening aspect upon the political horizon of this delightfnll depa1·tment: and only a moment of reflection on your part can dissipate it, and obliterate the political stain upon your fidelity. I have come amongst you without an armed force and I am pleased to find myself in that situation, because the arms which first ought to be used are those of re11son, justice and Conviction. If still I may be indebted to you for that respect and attention, which yon haYe always manifested towards me, I invite you to declare frankly: clearly and pointedly your opinions, and to avoid by every possible means, Covering with opprobrium and shame your 11oble Virtue. I am ready, and it is my duty to attend to your pacific demands. If thus you make them, I will unite myself with you, and second your demand!! before the supreme goYernment: but in any other way, I shall feel the bitter regret of being under the necessity of abandoning you to fate. This he promises and protests, who fills by your will the office of political Chief of this Department, and who is your sincere friend.
In the town of San Felipe de Austin, June 25th. 1832 (Signed) Ramon Musquiz.
[Bndorsed]
Translation of the Political Chiefs adress
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