You have collected the scallered relics of mortality which strewed the plains of La Bahia, and have commilled them with appropriate funeral honors to decent chrislian interment. This melancholy exercise of a pious patriotism has concentrated your feelings upon one painful and exciting subject, the !ale abominable massacre of those gallant men, whose bones you found bleaching on the prairie. And by a nalural association, your highest resentments have been elicited towards the reputed author of that manifold and vilanous murder. And hence it is Citizen Soldiers, that you have suffered passion to usurp the rightful dominion of reason, and have in fatal opposition to every principle of free and liberal governments, arrayed yourselves against the civil authorities, and endeavored with a high hand to restrain its operations,.and with a dictatorial voice, to prescribe its duties. We have yielded lo your remonstra.nce because we hold the internal tranquility of Texas, in the newness of her political existence, as paramount lo all other considerations. But we have done so under a full knowledge that our national reputation would suffer some detriment, and this we count a great evil, not easy to be repaired, and never to he compensated by our pasionate gratifications or illusory hopes which you have founded upon your favorite policy of keeping Santa Anna. In discharging the high duties committed lo us by the people of Texas, we have endeavored to discard all intemperate passions from our councils, and to consult and advance the best interests of our country, by a reasonable, upright, resolute and pacific policy. Time may yet disclose the error and its location. I have hastily presented to you some of the reasons that have influenced the Government of Texas lo solemnize a treaty with the President of Mexico. There is nothing certain that depends on human action, but I do verily believe that if the civil government had not been prevented by the unwarranted interferrence of the Military power, Texas would have had her independence formally ratified by the Government of Mexico within four months from this day. All other nations would then have recognized it as a matter of course. To those who dcligbt in War, and are seeking military fame, this probably would have been but an ungracious boon. But to the farmer, the mechanic the peaceful _citizen of whatever vocation, it is surely "a consumalion devoutly to be wished.•• To Texas it would have
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