356
TEXAS STATE LIBR.\RY
tions held out to foreigners under the impc-rial government of Itur- bide or Augustin 1st. In a short time however the nation deposed Itur- bide and deposited the supreme executive power in three individuals. This supreme executive power on the 18th of August, 1824, adopted a national colonization law, in which they recognized and confirmed the imperial colonization law with all its guarantec-s of person and property. They also ceded to the different states, all the vacant lands witl1iu their respective limits (see )l"atioual Colonization law articles 1st, 4th,) In accordance with this law the state of Coahuila and Texas on the 24th of l\Iat·ch 1825, adopted a colonization law for the purpose, as expressed in the preamble, of protecting the froutieri:, expelling the savages, augmenting the },opnlation of its vacant territory, multiplying the raising of stock, promoting the cultivation of its fertile lands, and of the .arts and of commerce. In this state-colonization law-the promises to protect the persons and property of the colonists, which had heen made in the two preceding national colonization Jaws were renewed and confirmed. "\Ve have now before us the invitations and 1?11.arantees under which the colonists immigrated to Texas;-Let us examine into the manner in which these conditions have been complied with, and these flattering promises fulfilled. · The donation of 4428 acres, sounds largely at a distance. Con- sidering, however, the difficulty and danger necessarily encountc-red in taking possession of those lands it will not be deemed an entire gratuity nor·a magnificent bounty. Tf this territory had been pre- viously pioneered by the enterprise o_f the l\Iexican irovernment, and freed from 1.1ie insecurities which beset a wildernern-trod only by sa:vages-if the government had been derivinir an actual reYeuue from it .and if it could have realised a capita) from the sale of it- then we admit that the donation would have been unexampled in the history of national liberality. But bow lamenta hly different from all this was the real state of the case. The lands f?ranted were in the occupancy of savaires, and situaterl in a wilderness of which the governmc-nt had never taken posses- siou, and of which it could ·not with its own citiz.ens, ever haYe taken possession, and they were not sufficic-ntly explored to obtain that knowledg-e of their character and situation necessary to a sale of them. They were shut out from all commercial intercourse with the rest of the world, and innccessible to th<' commonest comforts of life; nor were they brought into possession -and cultivation by the colonists withont much toil and privation, and patience .ind enter- prise, an,l suffering apd hlood, and loi,s of fivei. from Tnclian hostili- ti_es, and other <>auses. Under the ~miles of a henii:mant heaven. howe,•er, th<' untii·ing peneverancc- of the colonists triumphNl ovc-r all natural obstacles, exprlled the savages hy whom tl1<> country was infestc-<l, reduced the forl.'st into cultivation and made- th<' cles<>rt smile. From this it must anpcar that the lands of Texas. although nomi- nally givc-n, were in. f11ct nncl in reality dearly bought. It may be here p1·c-mised that a gift of lnnrls hy a nation to forci1mers on con- dition of their immigrating and hecoming citizens is immensely different from a gift hy one individual to another. Tn the- case or
Powered by FlippingBook