please. If it be proper that this should be prevented, it is necessary that laws be passed giving power to magistrates or military, and not leave it to their arbitrary discretion. As to the result of the present Mexican invasion of Texas, it is too hastily set on foot, ever to reach the Sabine. The Texians are much better organized, and their preparations every way, are much more formidable and matured. The loss of a battle or of ten battles, will not decide the contest, and the invaders will find they labor under the disadvantage of all invading armies entering a country entirely hostile, they can only conquer the portion actually occupied by their troops. The Texians will retire behind the Colorado, and at the distance of every thirty miles the country is crossed by a considerable stream, which will form a rampart against the enemy, while that enemy will have to approach the Colorado through a desert of three hundred miles, where they can have no permanent foot~old. The want of a depot on the sea coast, will be fatal to them; while the Texians, by their fortifications at Galveston, and their small armed vessels, will prevent any supplies to the Mexicans by sea. But above all this, the materials which compose the Texian force, in a moral point of view, are of the first <1uality. They are not common listed soldiers, but mostly young men of respectable families. The Mexican force will be principally the militia of the interior, poorly disciplined, not regularly armed, a sort of Cossack cavalry, which American ingenuity will oppose by some mode of defence adapted to the occacion. Mounted riflemen, I think, will be found an overmatch for their ropes and lances. I firmly believe that twenty thousand men, will now be more easily repelled than five thousand in the last campaign. H. M. Brackenridge. [3839) [DICKINS to GOROSTIZA] Department of State, August 1, 1836. The undersigned, acting Secretary of Stale of the United Stales, has had the honor to receive the note addressed Lo him by Mr. Gorosliza, envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary of the Mexican republic, under date of the 28th ultimo, and will lay the same before the President. It is a matter of deep regret that the frank explanations made by the President's directions lo Mr. Gorostiza, as to the
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