It has always been the desire of the Government lo communicate freely with the people on all public matters, and lo keep nothing from them, unless some imporlant state inlcrcsl should require concealment But many things have conspired to render such communications impracticable. The want of a press was sufficient; the entire interruption of the mails, was itself adequate; and other causes could be enumerated, having a similar influence upon the operations of Lhe Government. A Press is now happily eslahlished, and it is meet that we should avail ourselves of an early opportunity to render lo our Constituents some accounl of our Stewardship. This mcelness is exemplified and almosl resolved inlo absolute necessity, by the fact, that Cabinet objections and protestations, have gone out from us and are calculated lo perpetuate what we believe lo be the general misapprehensions in regard to a certain very prominent act of the administration. The late treaty negotiated with our distinguished prisoner, the President Santa Anna has, we are sensible, received an almost universal disapprobation from the people of Texas. Some have condemned it and its authors, in terms as unmeasured as their own imaginations, and as unqualified, as their own malignity could suggest. To such, we have no exposition to make, no reasons lo offer. To those who believe it was an unwise and an impolitic measure, but who have honesty enough themselves to believe it proceeded from honest motives, we would cheerfully render the best explanation the subject admits of. But it is very certain, that the folly or the wisdom of that treaty, cannot now be determi- nately ascertained, for the reason that the operation of the treaty was forcibly arrested and the experiment can never again be fairly made, under the same circumstances or with similar probabilities of success. In order to explain the whole character of that treaty, a succinct narrative of events, still fresh in the recolJection of many, is expedient. Soon after the retreat of the Army from the Colorado, and its encampment in the dense forests of the Brazos, by which movement the best improved, the wealthiest and the most populous porlion of Texas, was laid open lo the depredations of the enemy, the Government, then located al Harrisburg, directed the Secretary of War, now General Thomas J. Rusk, to repair to the Army, for the purpose of conferring with the Commander-in-
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