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h_ave witne~ed ,~i~h the deepest regret, and most painful apprehen- s10ns, the chspos1lton of that department lo abridge the powers of the G_eneral Co~ncil, which were designed as a check upon executive usurpation, and to assume to itself the provinces of both departments. The executive has from time to time, communicated his advice to the Council, which it has always received with that deference clue to the office from which it came, and has maturely weighed and deliberated upon the same, but when the Council has adopted the measures recommended by him in his message, he has withheld or delayed his signature to their ordinances, or neglected to .comply with their requisitions; and at other times he has transcended all authority, violating the organic law, framed and enacted by the people's own immediate representatives, in General Council assembled, and the republican principles of the constitution of Mexico of 1824, which he is solemnly sworn to support; and has imputed to the Council the evils resulting from his own acts. He has assumed the right of appointing and commissioning, and has so appointed and commissioned, private individuals to take the command of armies, without the consent or advice of the Council, and in direct violation and contradiction of the organic law of the convention, to which he owes his official existence. After the reduction of Bexar, the volunteer troops being idle within our boundary, numbers daily coming in to our a1;sistance from the United States of the North, and the country not affording the means of supporting them, it was thought advisable by the Council and the Governor so advised them, to keep the war without our territories, and to have the volunteers actively and profitably employed. For that purpose the Council authorized Colonel J. W. Fannin to enlist volunteers, hold an election of officers; and the army when raised and organized, to make a descent upon Matamoras, specifying the manner, and prescribing the limits of Colonel Fannin's actions as the agent of the Government for that special purpose; for which they received from the Governor the vilest and most uncouth anathema, couched in the most vulgarly abusive language, charging them with appointing a generalissimo with plenary powers, to conduct a plundering and marauding expedition, and wishing to join with it a piratical co-operation; while he himself without the advice, consent, or knowledge of the Council, and plainly and palpably in violation _of th~ organic law, which he is unequivocally sworn to obey, had Jll~t given to James Bowie, not known to the government as an officer of any rank whatever, orders, through the Commander-in-Chief, to raise an
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